


Are You A Saint Or A Sinner?

by Asukachan07



Series: WestAllen AUs [15]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, BAMF Iris West, Dark Barry Allen, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Magic, Mildly Dubious Consent, Other, Resolved Sexual Tension, Temporary Amnesia, Thawne Is His Own Warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:55:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23873506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asukachan07/pseuds/Asukachan07
Summary: They didn't fall. They're still fighting.They just forgot.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Iris West, Minor Lisa Snart/Cisco Ramon
Series: WestAllen AUs [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1471967
Comments: 58
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Gifted to all my fellow West-Allen shippers 💜⚡❤
> 
> The West-Allen scenes at the end of last episode is still making me 😭💔 so I had to make myself feel better. I can't believe that we won't even have a complete season.
> 
> I bet you can't believe that I'm posting another WIP, either 🤪

**_Him_ **

As he squeezed the fingers wrapped around the left side of his neck, Barry noted for the second time that there were mirrors everywhere in the witch's cabin.

He had first appreciated the sight of them because he'd realized that, come dawn on the third day, they'd show right away if the spell had worked.

But now, he vaguely remembered that mirrors could be used as a way to reach out to other planes of existence. The mortals called them dimensions too.

So he dragged his battered body to the closest one, stared at the reflective surface for a few seconds, then let his face drop when her face didn't appear from the other side. But even as he looked back up, he tried to imagine that she was there because he had to talk to her, to give himself hope. To stave off the fear that was making him doubt.

What an awful emotion, fear. Did all earthbound creatures experience it, or was this part of the curse?

"Iris, I..." he started, still unused to this voice, to this corporal body that ached and bruised and bled, a body he might get stuck with for the Highest One knew how long now.

"I don't know if it's crazy to think that you can hear me," he kept going, his eyes misting over. "I guess right now I just need to believe it."

Silence.

Iris wasn't there to remind him that hope was the only thing that could see them through the worst of war, when victory seemed unattainable. She always adapted better to their new vessels, and whatever her new envelope she always seemed to look the same: beautifully radiant, unbelievably strong, and eternally faithful.

Faithful to their cause, faithful to their ability to carry out the mission, faithful in the promise of going home when the fight was over.

Faithful in their love.

"I miss you," he confessed, sounding weak, feeling weak. "So much."

He kept looking at the mirror, kept hoping that intangible ripples would disturb the smooth surface and show him her face.

"If you can hear me," he resumed, tears falling from his eyes. "I guess I just need you to know that...I love you." 

As soon as he uttered those three words, he felt the spell flare in him, as if it had needed this one last element to work.

And then Barry felt true hope. It wasn't quite as invincible as Iris' faith, but he knew that it was strong enough if not to reverse the curse, to at least keep it at bay.

"Our love is constant," he stated the simple truth. "Across dimensions. Across time. To the end of the world and back..."

Those words made him consider something for the first time, the simple explanation to why he couldn't reach her through this mirror: what if she hadn't fallen? What if she'd won her battle? She was so much stronger than him even though she claimed the opposite. Just because he'd been defeated didn't mean that she had.

The cursed immortal, the strongest one, the most wretched of them all because he'd dared bite him.

Eobard Thawne. Just thinking his name made Barry want to throw up.

He'd been stronger than Barry had expected any earthbound creature to be. But if someone could bring him down, or at least strategically retreat from a battle against him, from this overwhelming army of undead, it was Iris.

So of course she wasn't on the other side of any mirror, because she was still earthbound.

"And if I know you, I know that you're not just fighting to find your way home, but that you're looking for me," he said to the mirror just as the pain in his neck abated. 

"Who are you talking to?" The witch's voice came as she returned to the room holding a steaming mug in both hands.

From the mirror he saw her eyebrows twitch as she took in his appearance through his reflection. Now that he was looking at himself too, he did look better.

He felt better, thanks to Iris. Thanks to her love and faith in them. Wherever she was.

"I'm gonna get you back," he promised before turning around and accepting the mug and swiftly taking a sip.

It smelled terrible, but he was parched, he'd been fighting and stumbling all over the metropolis for three nights and two days until he'd finally found the witch's cabin, and—

"No!" He exclaimed when he recognized the tincture at the first sip.

An amnesia potion.

"Why would you do that?" He asked, angry—he hated that emotion, not as much as fear, but that awful, uncontrollable heat in his chest spreading to the rest of his body was so unpleasant!

"Apologies," the mortal pleaded, but he could tell that she didn't feel very guilty.

Mortals didn't like his kind anymore, for some reason. They were so ungrateful, humans, Barry bet that history wouldn't even acknowledge his legion's role in mitigating the casualties of this war. None of the mortals, not even the meta-humans, could've held up against the vampires on their own.

"I didn't think that the spell would work," this meta-human explained. "If you'd turned I would've been in danger, and I cannot die. Not now."

Right. That was one of the reasons why he'd come to this witch in particular: all the mortals he'd talked to had claimed that she was among the most powerful meta-humans in the area.

"You helped me, so I'll help you," he decided as he put the mug away. "I don't think I can become a meta, but I'm strong and I can learn science. I'll protect you."

"It's actually my husband who's the witch,*" she told him as she pulled out a chair and sat on it. "I'm more of a sorceress, that's why Thawne wants me dead: because I can save the ones he tries to turn if they get to me on time. My husband is hunted down by the other immortals because he's teaching mortals how to strengthen their bodies so that their souls aren't so easy to curse in the first place."

Wanted dead, hunted down. What wretched lives these mortals lived down below. And now he would walk among them.

An unexpected tingling sensation ran through him, and he gasped quietly. He stared at the sorceress, silently asking for an explanation.

"It truly worked," she announced as she invited him to turn towards the window.

First light. Sunrise. He wasn't burning. The spell had taken.

"I told you, didn't I?" He reminded her, even though he'd been as skeptical as her when he'd first seen her.

Mortals were so fragile, and he'd come down to earth a thousand times without needed the help of any one of them before. He hadn't been sure that this one could truly help protect him from an immortal curse.

But mortals had one thing in common with his kind, one thing that the cursed ones envied them and tried vainly to take from them. It was the most powerful magic of all that immortals tried to suck from mortals and his kind alike.

Love.

"Ah, we'll need to explain my presence to your kin," Barry realized, smiling back at the sorceress' amusement.

"You look just like my father," she claimed. "And if we hide for a decade or so, I'll look old enough to pass for your mother."

"Mother," he repeated the word he knew but had never had cause to use. "What is your name, mother?"

"I'm Nora Allen," she introduced herself. "My husband, who should arrive any moment now, is Henry Allen."

"Oh, you wear the same name," he remembered the odd mortal tradition. "Then that will make me Barry Allen."

He liked the sound of it. He could tell that this woman was a better soul than most—that's what she was, a woman. Calling her a mortal was a bit condescending, he believed. 

"What kind of name is Barry?" She asked, her tone almost chiding. "And you don't have a last name?"

"Nor a middle name," he informed her with a shrug. "Names aren't redundant where we live, so there's no need for more than one. My beloved's name is..."

Her name was...What?

He couldn't remember. How was that possible?

"Oh, no," the sorceress—Nora Allen—whispered, now looking apologetic. "Normally it would take at least half of the potion to work, but it probably got mixed up with the spell countering the curse..."

Barry wanted to cry—he was crying, tears were running down his cheeks and he was sobbing.

Defeated in battle, half-cursed, and forgetful of the name of his soulmate? He'd truly fallen. How could he ever go back home? There was no point if he couldn't be with the one he loved!

"Do not worry Barry, you will remember," Nora assured him as she came to crouch down by his side. "The moment you see her face—"

"I can't remember her face either," he realized with renewed sorrow. "And that's quite normal, we never keep the same envelope, every mission calls for different vessels, and in our home we just know..."

"Then how do you recognize each other down here?" The sorceress questioned, puzzled. 

He had to think hard to remember the process.

"Touch?" He chanced, and it sounded right, but incomplete. "We touch a lot, superficially at first, going around the group. And we call each other's name, or nicknames, we do have nicknames don't we? But I can't remember mine, or hers either for that matter. Then we touch lips to skin—we kiss! Yeah, the kiss on the cheek usually clears it up, that's when we know and can then exchange breaths. Oh, that's called kissing too, but it's different, better. Still, without the name there's no way of knowing for sure. The order is name, touch then kiss. Communion bypasses all that, don't fairies do that a lot? But my kind, we don't do that, not down here. That's almost wasteful.."

"By communion, do you mean sex?" Nora Allen asked. "You lie with each other?"

"Yeah, I believe that's what it's called here," Barry confirmed. "But we don't do it here, it's pretty useless, right? In these envelope, love isn't eternal nor continuous...The rapture can't possibly last more than minutes...seconds? Oh, that's so short. No wonder the incubi and succubi aren't as powerful as the vampires. But this world would be doomed if they were, I suppose."

"A few seconds of rapture should be enough to break an amnesia spell, actually," Nora estimated with a firm nod, before she winced. "But you might have to try achieving it with many women before you find your beloved."

"My beloved isn't a woman," he corrected her, "she's a—"

Oh no, no no nonono.

He couldn't remember what she was. What he was too. What was their kind's name?

"Yeah, I thought that you'd forget that too," Nora—mother—admitted. "Sorry, beautiful."

"It's alright, you didn't mean any harm. And you're beautiful too, mother." he complimented her back as he heard a door open. One leading to the outside.

It must be the front one, because to his ear it didn't sound like the back door through which the sorceress had invited him inside. 

A few minutes later, after Barry and Nora had settled at the table, a mortal male—a man—walked inside, blinking at the sight of him.

He only looked at his soulmate—companion? No, wife, that was the female equivalent of husband, yes—quizzically before pressing his lips to her forehead in greetings.

"And who is that one?" Henry Allen asked, somehow suspicious but more amused. "You're aware that he's immortal right? Are you cheating on me with an incubus? And why does he only smell half-cursed?"

"My name's Barry Allen," he said as he moved and...oh.

"Henry, no!" Nora Allen cried as she stepped between her husband and Barry, who'd moved faster than he'd intended. "He's spelled, darling, he's fine. He won't harm us. He offered to protect us, in fact."

"How could...oh," the witch started then paused.

Witch or warlock, either worked, if Barry remembered correctly.

He didn't remember being able to move so fast unless he was trying to match another swift creature. His kind tended to be slow-moving in times of peace.

"I heard of others like him falling against Thawne's coven," Henry Allen shared as his wife stepped aside. "The Coalition might know more. I'll ask Joe."

Nora nodded in understanding, and Barry trusted that she'd teach tell him about that coalition later. He had a lot to learn.

"Barry Allen, huh?" the witch repeated with an amused lift of his lips and a tilt of his head as he took in Barry's appearance. "He does look like you, honey! Is he passing for your brother?"

"Oh, no, let's not do that," Nora objected. "Donald would grow suspicious right away. I haven't been seen in quite some time, so if we don't make any public appearance for ten more years, I think he could pass for our—"

"Son," Henry finished the sentence, then offered him a small smile.

"Father," Barry said back.

They were halfway through breakfast when Henry proposed that Barry's full name be Bartholomew Henry Allen.

Such a long name, so mortal-sounding. He'd bet that his beloved's full name would manage to still sound strong yet ethereal, something short and powerful even if she got a middle name too.

"I'm gonna get you back," he promised again, quietly, as he closed his eyes and slept during the day, not because of the curse, but because his earthbound body needed immediate rest.

* * *

**_Her_ **

**_"_** I know you can't probably hear me, Barry, but," Iris spoke up as she stared at the ceiling high mirror in the guest room she'd been graciously given.

Dawn would break out in a few minutes, which was the only reason why she'd gotten any rest from slaying the suicidal vampires who thought that just because she was alone they could take her down. Thawne and his generals were so much stronger than those, and even in her weaker body she'd had no problem using the archaic weapons that she'd borrowed from her hosts to release each and every single soul from their curse. It was only because the rest of those blood suckers had fled at the knowledge that first light was near that she'd stopped fighting. 

Just like she'd stopped looking for her soulmate. For now.

Iris had flown and ran and looked, but she hadn't found Barry. Almost all of their kind had returned home after their enveloped had deteriorated. But not only did she believe that he hadn't fallen because he was the strongest among them—he always said that it was her, and it was so silly—but also because she'd tried to contact him from across planes of existence for three days now and it hadn't worked.

So now she knew that Barry was still earthbound, just like her. And it made sense. They weren't done. They had failed their mission. They'd lost the battle, but not the war. They had to keep fighting.

And she knew that she could do it, always, but without him she felt so weak. It had only been three days. A blink of an eye in their existence, really, and they'd been apart for much longer before, but it had been because they'd been on the battlefield every second of it. They were always thinking of each other, even on their mission, but then the thought of them invigorated one another. Thinking of Barry kept her movements sharp, precise and powerful; it lessened the pain that was inevitable in her earthbound vessel; it helped her stay unafraid and faithful in their victory.

"Being away from you hurts more and more every day..." she confessed to her own reflection, tears building up in the eyes she was still familiarizing herself with.

Barry had liked them, as always, and he'd recognized her in the crowd first. Iris could never tell if she recognized him just as fast because she just knew or because he always had that same look when their eyes met, regardless of his earthbound body.

Others needed to call their soulmates' names and touch and maybe kiss on the cheek before they could lose themselves in each others like Barry and Iris could right away. That's why they were stronger than most, and why they were generals. 

The Gold Standard, they were called.

As she looked at her reflection Iris saw the new lips Barry had kissed and tasted weeks ago.

Before battle, he'd broken protocols as he usually did by dragging her into a private corner and stealing fleeting seconds of rapture that made her giggle for long minutes. This time it had felt more exhilarating than in the past few lives, truly. They had considered staying for a few years before moving back home if they ended the war early. 

They usually did, but this time, they'd been...Not misinformed, but unprepared. Outnumbered. They'd fallen by the dozen every night, and had Iris not been determined to taste Barry's new lips again at the end of the mission, she might have fallen too. But she hadn't even sustained any serious injury. The thought of him was what had fueled her, what had made her strong.

He claimed that it was the same for him. So if she was still standing, so was he. He had to be somewhere in the area, looking for her.

"...but I still have hope because I know that you are out there fighting...to get me back home," she kept going, needing a pause because it really hurt not to know.

She had faith that she was right, but there was a heavy discomfort in her chest because of the lack of evidence. She was faithful and trusting, but in her earthbound body she felt so much weaker.

"If you can hear me," she resumed, knowing that he couldn't but needing to talk to him anyway, somehow. "I guess I just need you to know that..."

She reached out to the smooth reflective surface, her heart breaking anew that he wasn't appearing on the other side.

"I love you," she reminded him as she placed her hand on the mirror anyway, sobbing. "And our love is constant: across dimensions, across time, to the end of the world and back. And I'm going to find Kamilla, and I'm going to find Singh..."

She'd heard them call out to her as she'd departed the battlefield to find Barry, that first daybreak after their official defeat.

Iris had searched and looked and sought Barry out, but she hadn't found him. And when her weak body had collapsed, she'd been taken in by a married couple of kind and strong mortals, just past the quarter duration of an ideal life.

They were brave too, she'd found out when night had come and they'd gone outside with her, to one of the areas of the metropolis that Thawne had claimed as his turf. And she'd found out that they were powerful too, and disciplined, and mission oriented. They slayed vampires quite efficiently, though nowhere as fast as her.

They were hunters, secret soldiers under the command of an elusive group of elders called The Coalition. In normal times, the hunters were law enforcers, making sure that the cursed immortals followed the rules allowing them and mortals to live in harmony.

Whereas Iris and the other angels only ever came down to release the earth from the most powerful evil entities—and usually it was just one kind at a time—hunters fought against all physical supernaturals just as exorcists took care of the intangible ones. There were thousands of them, and in normal times those numbers were enough to maintain peace and harmony between all earthbound creatures.

But then Eobard Thawne, one of the vampires, had organized a civil war and had started taking over all the other covens of his kind. The brutal conflict had caused the deaths of thousands of 'donors', sucked dry to feed the vampires from Thawne's army as well as the vampires opposing him.

Vampires were too fast for mortals, and usually they respected rules much better than the other immortals, but this time around they'd been the ones causing chaos. All because of one exceptionally powerful vampire.

Iris' hosts, Francine and Joe West, had ensured her that The Coalition would be able to restore order in the aftermath of the war. They'd recommended she go back from where she came from, because her kind wasn't looked on too kindly anymore. Angels came down rarely, and mortals resented that. At least fairies, the other non-cursed immortals who lived in the same plane of existence as angels, had taught magic to mortals before leaving them. Many mortals were proficient practitioners now, called meta-humans because they were humans but much more powerful.

Angels hadn't taught anything to humans that they valued: faith, fortitude, rapture after communion...Those were intangible sources of power, and they came from inside, from the soul, and there was only so much power that human vessels could contain.

But Iris wouldn't leave. She had to finish her mission, she had to bring down Thawne, for as long as he remained, other vampires will try to avenge their kin, the leaders of their covens. And there will be more deaths, more blood spilled in a war not started by mortals themselves. Iris couldn't leave before she tried everything to prevent history from repeating itself. So she had to gather all of her kind who were left and soldier on. Then...

"...but most of all, I'm going to find my way back to you," she promised Barry as tears rolled down her cheeks.

She quickly wiped them away when she heard someone knock.

"Come in," she invited as she turned around, a genuine smile stretching her lips as Francine entered with a steaming mug of tea.

"This should help you sleep better," the mortal informed her. "There's a rumor that werewolves from Keystone City are trying to settle at the port. That area isn't claimed by any immortal yet, it's quite unstable. We will check it out tonight. Would you like to come with us?"

"Werewolves," Iris repeated as she took a sip of the drink.

It tasted delicious. Vanilla? And a little bit of cinnamon. Love tasted better than what her earthbound tastebuds detected when she was down here, but it was still a nice human experience, much better than pain and anger and fear.

"Werewolves are humans cursed into roaming as oversized wolves, who are mindless every full moon," the woman told her, unaware that Iris knew about all the creatures that existed on this plan of existence.

After all, she was a...a—a what?

"What did you do?!" She accused the mortal as she let the half-empty cup drop on the floor, the potion of amnesia spilling over the hardwood floor. "What...what is..."

She collapsed, and couldn't even thank the mortal for breaking her fall.

"I'm so sorry, gorgeous," she heard the lady say. "Thawne's already after me, and if he hears that Joe and I are hiding a general of the angel army, he'll go rampage on the entire city just to get rid of us. We need to lay low for now...At least until we can pass for your parents."

Iris remembered for one last moment that she was looking for her lover. Her soulmate.

"I'm going to find my way...back to you," she reiterated before losing consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!
> 
> * real magic exists in this universe, but in this chapter what Barry calls witchcraft is just medicine, and at that point sorcery was already re-branded exorcism. Barry knows all the terms, but he's exhausted and injured and under the influence of multiple types of magic at once. That's why he sounds so out of time and just out of it, whereas Iris speaks normally. Nora is just following along with Barry's vocabulary.
> 
> No, but seriously, last episode: best West-Allen scene since, what? Season 4? Season 3? Grandice you still got it, action scene and EVERYTHING!!!
> 
> Someone cast these two as co-leads in a thriller movie when this health crisis ends, because the show runners are sleeping on them. COME ON! Stop wasting a chemistry that might convince aliens that our planet is actually worth a visit. SMDH.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris is trying to make history, while Barry is running out of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the previous mix-up of the notes and summaries! All edited now.

**Her**

"So, I went to my first meeting with The Coalition as the pack's Alpha," Eric announced while he wiped sweat off his brow with a towel just as Iris grabbed two of his pack mates and her own former co-workers by the throat and pushed them down hard.

They grunted upon impact, but easily rolled back up, Mason to her left and Spencer behind her.

Finally, Iris now had sparring partners she didn't need to pull punches for. And they were proper supernatural allies to boost. The Coalition hadn't given her any credit for making the decision to let the former humans turn when they got attacked two months ago. Not that she'd expected better from those self-important bureaucrats.

That's why she'd gone free-lance at the same time as she'd quit Central City Picture News to open the Central City Citizen. Not like being a hunter paid anything but the occasional 'thank you' from a rescued victim of a supernatural criminal.

"How did that go?" She asked as she jumped in a backward flip to avoid a kick from Spencer, and ducked out of Mason's punch.

"Let's say that I understand why you quit being their obedient little soldier," the editor-in-chief of Central City Picture News stated. "No offense, but they sound more like immortals than I do. Maybe because they deal with immortals on a regular basis, whereas I've only been a werewolf for two full moons."

"I mean, they've got to at least sound ancient and wise in order to be taken seriously by the ancient and not-so-wise supernaturals," Mason commented before he charged Iris, lowering his torso to tackle her.

She kicked a leg up and twirled in corkscrew flip above his rushing form, landing in a crouch that allowed her to spring forward and up, grabbing Spencer's kicking leg with both hands and using both of their momenta to slam her onto the floor. Iris rolled backward as soon as the younger reporter tapped twice on the mat, and kipped up to face Mason again.

"I passed Captain Singh on my way out of the meeting," Eric informed Iris after she perfectly timed a spinning wheel kick to Mason's head. "How many of you enhanced hunters are there? It's so weird to be able to just smell the difference between groups of people now."

Iris winced a bit when Mason flopped to the floor like a flour bag, and released a loud exhale of relief when he just shook his head and stood back up.

"You're talking about that weird alcohol smell, right?" Spencer asked from her seat on the mat. "I think I smelled it on Kamilla Hwang as well. Are there more?"

"Nope, just the three of us," Iris informed the group of fellow journalists.

Yeah, it was just three out of the two thousand hunters in Central City who had successfully responded to the enhancer drugs The Coalition researchers had created to boost physical performance. Iris seemed to respond to it the best because she was faster and stronger than even Singh despite him being male, taller and heavier than her.

Iris' dad claimed that it was because he'd trained Iris from a young age, and indeed she didn't remember a time when she wasn't involved in some kind of physical training. While kids were learning to bike without the back wheels, Iris was learning to climb building walls without a rope, hold her breath under water for minutes, and learn to use all types of weaponry.

She'd joined The Coalition at fifteen years old, and had slayed more supernaturals than any other hunter in recorded history. She hadn't done it for the honor and glory at first, but when her father had refused to let her join the police after she finished high school, Iris had started to resent the call of duty. As a journalist, Iris would never be publicly recognized as a keeper of peace between mortals and immortals, unlike her father who would likely get full honors for an LODD* down the road.

Once upon a time, Iris had dreamed of dying while taking down if not Eobard Thawne himself then at least one of his generals in a full-on war opposing The Coalition to the vampires. But now she knew that it was unlikely that another vampire insurgence would happen in her life time, and the only vampires she'd ever slay were the weak and impulsive ones who were newly turned and mostly unaware of The Coalition rules.

Now she was aware that she might never get to avenge her mother, whom Thawne had killed along with many other exorcists capable of reversing or nullifying the vampire curse among others. Iris had been too young when her mom died to remember much about her, and her father didn't talk about her at all. But she'd read about her in The Coalition archives (without authorization), learning that Francine West née Elliott had also been a hunter, fighting along her husband during the tense years leading to Thawne's takeover of the entire vampire community of Central City. Francine had been a lawyer, though, so she hadn't received any special honors for her ten years of service with The Coalition. She was just one among thousands of fallen soldiers to them, even though she'd been exceptional enough for Thawne himself to personally hunt her down.

Iris refused to go down in anonymity like that. She would be remember for centuries to come, her name spoken right along her father's even though she wouldn't have her name on the Wall of Honors at the City Hall.

How? By making the immortals remember her. They, unlike The Coalition, acknowledged her role in establishing stable alliances between groups of cursed souls who naturally didn't mix that well. A year ago, every border between immortals' turfs had been a mini battlefield, but Iris had managed to befriend at least one law-abiding supernatural among the biggest groups of immortals represented at The Coalition's conference table: merpeople, nightmare-demons, sex-demons, sirens, wendigos and werewolves. By befriending, she meant being able to talk to them without them trying to harm her.

(Vampires didn't have any diplomatic liaison consulting with The Coalition, of course, which was why not a week went by without a hunter group having to take down a wayward vampire.)

As of now, Iris only had the werewolves as true friends, because she knew them personally. She had also managed to endear herself to the merpeople, sirens and wendigos, which was such a weird thing to think about. She'd negotiated a truce between the three flesh-eating rival groups. The wendigo's turf at the docks used to be plagued by trespassing vampires from Keystone City, but with the sirens being granted a small portion of the docks following Iris' recommendation, it wasn't a problem anymore: vampires were repulsed by the presence of sirens, just like they were by the presence of mermaids and mermen. It was something about their salty skin.

Iris' next step was to befriend a sex-demon, and she had already spoken to the incubus Leonard Snart, son of Lewis Snart, leader of the largest sex-demon clan in Central City. Considering that the sex-demons were the largest group of supernaturals, the Snart Clan was one that The Coalition avoided angering at all cost. That was one other reason why Iris had quit The Coalition: the leaders tolerated too many crimes from groups who were supposedly going to help them fight the vampires if Thawne ever tried to bathe Central City in mortal blood again. Lewis Snart was linked to no less than fifty murders in the past five years, but because all of his victims were either homeless people or illegal sex workers, CCPD had been told not to bother arresting him. Iris had an article ready to expose that injustice, but before that she had to make sure that no one would come after her for doing it. So she had to help Leonard Snart, a much less murderous incubus, take over the family clan. She was lucky that Leonard hated his father.

What could she offer Snart the son as immediate incentive for working with her, though? She didn't know yet, but she was meeting him later in the evening. She'll think on her feet and come up with something.

* * *

**Him**

"Thanks," he told Snart as he passed him what looked like salt but was actually the drug that was keeping his bloodlust at bay.

"No, thank you, Mr. Fairy," the incubus singsonged as he sprinkled the white powder on his fries—Barry wondered if sex-demons actually obtained anything from real food. "You're the one who perfected the formula, and now I can sell it not just to my fellow demons but to Wendigos as well. Next time we meet, it will be in a five-stars hotel and I'll be the one paying for the food.

"I'm not a fairy," Barry corrected him calmly. "And I'm not making you rich for the fun of it. You promised to make the killings stop in your clan. And you promised me to..."

Damn it. He couldn't believe that he'd stooped so low. But he was running out of time, and he needed answers. Information stuck in the confines of his subconscious.

"Ah, considering my little offer to get a little tender loving care session with one of my expertly trained escort girls?" The incubus asked with a smug smile. "I'm very impressed that you've managed to hold up without sex for so long. Aren't you fairies used to orgies every other day or something? That's why you're all tree huggers: high on weed and endorphins all day.

"I'm not a fairy!" Barry hissed, keeping his voice low even as anger bubbled in his chest.

He used to suppress that emotion, but after losing his mother then his father, unable to keep his promise to protect them, anger and sorrow were all he had left. He couldn't express sorrow in front of strangers, only to the meta-humans at S.T.A.R. Labs. In front of other immortals he had to always appear strong.

"You're a non-violent immortal who hangs out with the metas and has broken several codes of conduct to get a drug to keep your libido down," Snart pointed out. "Yet you're not an incubus. That makes you a fairy, Savitar."

Barry grabbed Leonard's wrist so fast that the other grunted in surprise, then in pain when Barry squeezed so hard that he'd break bone if either of them moved too suddenly.

"Call me a fairy again, see how non-violent I am," the cursed angel promised darkly.

He was non-violent...To mortals. That was the only part of his nature as an angel that had remained, along with his wings though now they were dark, almost black now, and the feathers were getting harder, almost leathery. The spell was fading, so he had to kill Thawne soon. He'd already killed one of his generals, Zoom, so it was only a matter of time before The Reverse Flash tried to find him. Barry was hiding, but not out of fear this time. He wanted to make sure that his conflict against the vampire didn't cause the death of innocent humans.

He needed The Coalition's help to take on Thawne's army without creating chaos, but The Coalition wouldn't help him unless he proved useful first...Or he proved too knowledgeable and impossible to silence.

"Wait, what?" The incubus whispered as he stared at Barry's hand on his arm. "That speed...You can't be a vampire. I can feel your body heat and hear your heart beat right now. What the hell are you?"

"I'm the god of wrath who's going to take Thawne's head," Barry answered behind gritted teeth. "Once I liberate that wretched soul from its long overdue existence in this plane of existence, I'll ascend again, but not before knowing that you'll stop the sins that your kind is committing against the mortals."

"As you say," Snart quipped, though not as lightly as usual.

Barry could tell that he was scared. Good.

"The escort girl," he brought up conversationally as he let go of the incubus' wrist. "I don't want her to be a virgin, nor fragile. I know that you drug some of them—"

"Hey, I don't force them to take the enhancers! They make their own decision, okay?" Snart assured him as he shook his hand. "I'm not my father. All my boys and girls are legal and covered. Which is why I'm so broke, but that's almost over thanks to you and another new associate of mine. I totally believe it when you say that Thawne's plotting something. This is the perfect time for revolutions. I myself am planning something..."

"I don't care what you're planning as long as no mortal is harmed in the process," Barry asserted with a shrug of his shoulders. "And I wasn't going to criticize your use of enhancers. That's a good thing for me. I need the girl you send me to be strong and resilient. I won't hurt her, but—"

"You'll tire her, yeah I'm well aware," the incubus followed his train of thought. "You can keep her, if you like her well-enough. My gift to you."

"Maybe I will, if she satisfies me," Savitar stressed out, wincing internally.

He hated that he felt compelled to do this: seek rapture with a soul that wasn't his soulmate. Every year he lost a bit of his true self, but Henry's death had really taken a toll on his soul. With the Allens gone, there had been no point holding onto the persona of the kind and hardworking Barry Allen, so except for when he worked with Cisco, Dr. Snow and Dr. Wells, he'd become Savitar, the mysterious immortal who at first glance terrorized the other supernaturals in Central City, when truly he was picking up the hunters' slack. Once Lewis Snart was taken care of Barry would request an audience with the leaders of The Coalition.

"Satisfaction is always guaranteed with a sex-demon," the incubus bolstered as he stood up. "Is there really nothing you can do about your...you know?" He added with a quick hand wave at his own face.

Barry sighed. No, there was nothing that could be done about his sunburn. Nora herself hadn't understood why he'd still turned sensitive to sunlight, though only on very bright days. Barry had guessed that it was because his soulmate had returned home without him, so the protective spell had lost its potency. He didn't resent her for leaving him behind. He just wished she'd done it before the third day, before he'd lost his memory of her.

Was the fact that the spell kept losing in power over time saying something about her, or about him? He didn't know. All he knew was that he needed to complete his mission so he could go home. With Thawne dead, his incomplete curse would be lifted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated! I reply to comments after posting the next update, I'm not ignoring anyone! I'm always excited about reactions and feedback!
> 
> *LODD= Line of Duty Death. A good and brave police officer like Joe who dies in the line of duty gets the fancy police burial, military-style honor. They shut down whole cities for funerals like that. 
> 
> Heartfelt thanks to cops out there keeping order and peace in the streets during this health crisis. Thoughts and prayers to them and all essential personnel who've been making sacrifices since Day 1 🙏🏾


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris walks out of a negotiation with Snart empty-handed; Barry faces exceptional vampires while rescuing humans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for the West-Allen reunion! Kinda, but not right then.
> 
> Warning for crude language and violence.

**Her**

"Excuse-me?" Iris asked, certain that she hadn't heard right.

"You'll be handsomely compensated for it," Leonard Snart assured her. "Have I mentioned that he's handsome too? He's got burn marks on the right side of his face but it adds to his charm, really."

"You want me to service one of your fucking sex-demon associates?" The huntress summed up, barely containing her outrage. "Are you out of your mind, Snart?"

"Savitar isn't a sex-demon," the incubus simply corrected her.

Hold up. Savitar?

"Savitar, the immortal who slayed Zoom? So he's a vampire!" Iris amended. "You want me to have sex with an undead person!"

"You hunters should work on your tendency to expect the worse from us immortals, you know?" The incubus chided with a click of his tongue. "Savitar isn't a vampire either. I've touched him myself, he's very much alive and very strong indeed to be able to defeat Thawne's right hand. As a member of The Coalition, you must be aware of how valuable an alliance with him would be."

"I'm not part of The Coalition anymore, or I wouldn't be offering to help you plot your father's demise!" Iris pointed out. "And you're not asking me to forge an alliance with a dangerous immortal, you're asking me to fuck him!"

"Technically he'd be the one fucking you," Snart quipped, "and who said that the two are mutually exclusive? He's willing to keep you if you satisfy him, and I hear that you're one of the three strongest hunters in the city. So you're much more resilient than any of my best escort girls. I promise you, Savitar can't hurt you, he's some type of fairy hybrid or something. I've seen him hang out with the meta-humans, and we both know that those guys have spells that prevent us cursed souls from standing closer than half a mile from their turf."

That was true, actually. Meta-humans did not mingle with immortals, or at least not with earthbound immortals. Semi-trustworthy archives claimed that the fairies had taught humans how to use magic to protect themselves from cursed souls, so it stood to reason that the immortal they'd befriended was a fairy. But weren't fairies strict pacifists? It was angels who selectively couldn't harm mortals. Sightings of either group were more and more rare. According to The Coalition, Central City hadn't been blessed with the presence of any winged creatures in centuries.

So much for angels being the sworn protectors of humankind. They clearly had been needed twenty-five years ago when Thawne had gone on a rampage!

"There's no such thing as a fairy-hybrid," she asserted with a scowl. "Do you think that I'm stupid because I'm a mortal?"

Iris wouldn't actually mind getting frisky with someone strong enough to tumble in the sheets, she was on a five years dry spell for. The first and actually only time she'd had sex had ended up with the guy hospitalized with broken hip bones. Apparently, Iris' usually well-controlled strength went wayward when she was in the throes of passion. Her dad had warned her that she might never have a normal love life, but he should've just bluntly let her know that taking the enhancer drugs would condemn her to a life of celibacy! Iris couldn't get off the drugs, she'd known that when she'd started them ten years ago, and not for lack of trying. The withdrawal symptoms were trippy as hell, hallucinations so real that they felt like memories. Plus a very dangerous urge to climb up high places. Thankfully, the one time Iris had jumped off a building, the drug had still been active enough to let her get away with just a sprained ankle.

So she indeed had the strength and stamina to keep up with an immortal in bed, but she doubted that the guy was even an immortal. Chances were that Savitar was just a powerful meta-human on enhancer himself, or a meta-human whose magical powers made him as strong and as fast as a powerful vampire.

"You're the one who needs a favor, Miss Huntress with a glamour on," Snart reminded her. "Didn't you wish for your journalist contact to be left alone after she exposes my father's wrongdoings?"

"An exposé that will smooth out your takeover!" Iris pointed out. "She'll be doing you a favor, just like me!"

"I don't need any favor from her," the incubus denied. "Unlike you mortals, we immortals aren't picky when it comes to leadership: anyone with the right name will do as long as they're strong enough. I have the right name, and when the times come, I'll be able to kill my father with your help. But hey, I'm willing to give your journalist friend something even better to write about: the first recorded battle opposing vampires and sex-demons in over a hundred years!"

"You mean the massacre of sex-demons by vampires?" Iris rephrased his announcement, though she was intrigued. "When did that happen?"

"It will happen two nights from now at the docks," Snart informed her, "and it won't be a massacre, at least not on the sex-demons' side. Two of the vampires are former sex-demons who double-crossed me on a lucrative business, so I left them as fodder for newly turned vampires on our following deal—"

"You're such a bastard," Iris commented flatly.

"Hey, they survived!" Leonard pointed out with a shrug. "So of course they want me to pay for what I did to them, yadda yadda. I wouldn't give them the time of the day—see what I did there?—if they weren't in charge of a sizable portion of the sex-trafficking ring that supplies donors to Thawne's coven."

"You want to steal Thawne's feeding supply?" Iris asked, dumbfounded by the incubus' suicidal tendencies. "I mean, go ahead and get killed, and maybe trigger the extinction of your entire clan, then I won't need to sweat a drop for your revolution. Thawne will never let such an affront be tolerated."

If she could intercept the truck transporting the poor sex slaves, though? The Coalition would be pissed, but her conscience would be clear. She'd never been able to get intel on that kind of thing when she was an official hunter. Hanging out with the immortals themselves was the best idea she'd ever had!

"Ah, ah, I'm only giving the journalist authorization to witness the historical moment," Snart specified. "You said that you're not with The Coalition anymore, so I don't want no hunter butting into my business, capice? Anyways, Thawne will gladly get his fangs on any meddling mortal."

"Only the journalist, I promise," Iris confirmed. "And no hunter other than me to keep her safe."

Snart didn't need to know that she was one and the same.

"No offense girlfriend, but you'll have to send someone less...Stinky to be the journalist's bodyguard," the incubus advised with a scrunch of his nose."That alcohol smell...Not my favorite, and the average vampire's nose is more accurate than mine, only second to a werewolf's. Sam and Rosa will detect you from a mile away."

Damn it! She had been thinking of countering that smell somehow, because of course immortals could spot her, Singh and Kamilla among other mortals. But could she find the right spell or counter drug in two days?

"Well, I can't promise anything," she told Snart. "I still think that the exposé on Lewis will help spread the word to other immortal groups that you're the new guy in charge."

"One puny article can't beat a word to mouth from my own employees," the sex-demon pointed out. "Unless people know that the journalist is friends with Savitar's mate."

"Not happening," Iris denied as she leaned away from the wall, conveying that the conversation was coming to a close.

She heard and felt the dozen of Leonard's bodyguards shift along with her, and contained a smile.

She appreciated Snart swallowing his immortal pride to acknowledge her worth. She actually could take down all twelve of his employees alone. Sex-demons were only stronger than sirens and merpeople. If Iris could take on two newly turned werewolves at once, then she, a mortal, was stronger than the majority of all supernaturals. Pride was a capital sin, but she'd take it over being weak. She wasn't religious, anyways.

Generally speaking, werewolves and vampires shared the status of strongest earthbound supernaturals. It really boiled down to the individuals' power. If she kept training with Larkin's pack, she might get strong enough to defeat a vampire general.

Maybe she'd be able to wound Thawne himself? She didn't dare hope, though.

"Anything you want the humans to remember about you, in case you don't make it out of the docks alive in two nights?"

"Nah, my odds are good," the incubus bragged as he made a shoo motion with his hand. "But think about my offer to befriend Savitar, alright Miss Hunter? My proposition has merits. Sleep on it."

Iris wouldn't actually mind dreaming of a handsome guy, scars and all. All her wet dreams were weird: they felt real, but the orgasms lasted so long that she felt post-coital bliss minutes after waking up, which was a blessing considering her celibate state. But the weird thing was that she could never make out the face of her sex partner. He sounded handsome, and just remembering his breathy tone as they pleasured each other made Iris warm...Not a good idea in the middle of a sex-demon dare. Thankfully the smell of the enhancer masked everything else.

Those drugs...It really was time to do something about them.

* * *

**Him**

"Wait, Barry!" Cisco called out in his earpiece. "Are you really going to the docks?"

"I'm there already," he informed his friendly meta-human acquaintance. "Quiet, I need a minute."

Barry couldn't tell if the curse had dulled his senses. If it had, it was at a negligible rate.

From his spot on the roof of a shipping container suspended high by a crane, he could hear the uneven breathing and whimpers of fifty-two scared humans cramped in the back of three distinct trucks parked in the warehouse located a quarter mile north of his position; he could see five vampires conferring at the entrance of that warehouse; he could smell sirens lurking in the shipment container yard below, and merpeople looking on from the shore.

And seconds after the tires of a clearly unexpected van screeched on the gravel near the warehouse, the cursed angel could almost taste Leonard Snart's recklessness.

"Cisco, call the hunters: there's an inter-supernatural altercation at the docks," he instructed the hacker before flying off his perch.

"Holy shit!" Was the young meta's first reaction before he went silent for a minute. "Yeah, okay, done! One of the trinity was here and she's heading that way as fate would have it. I'll tell her to speed it up!"

That was good.

Barry had never met any of the enhanced hunters because he wasn't needed wherever they went. He focused on helping mortals, not on slaying the cursed souls terrorizing them. Of course, if any supernatural got in his way to rescue humans, he got rid of it.

He landed almost silently at the chained and sealed backdoor of the warehouse, the beat of his ever darkening feathers quiet but still audible to any immortal paying attention. Thankfully, the vampires and sex-demons were too busy slaying each other—Snart must have just fed himself and his group to be able to hold their own against vampires, even low-ranked ones. Maybe the incubus had distributed a few doses of enhancers too.

Barry let out an expletive when he opened the back of one truck and was assaulted by the scents of fear, sweat, secreted waste and depressant drugs. He'd hoped to convince a few mortals to drive the two other trucks, but none of them were in condition to help themselves. 

Hopefully the hunters were close.

"Who the hell are you?" A female voice demanded to know.

Quiet, no body heat, no heartbeat.

Undead. Vampire.

Barry would've slayed her with a single garlic-coated bullet if she hadn't managed to lock gazes with him, and ah, she was gifted in hypnosis.

Angels couldn't get hypnotized, but they could get vertigo.

"My, my, if it isn't Savitar," a male vampire said as he...was Barry hallucinating after all? That undead had just walked out of a mirror!

"That's Savitar?" The female vampire asked as she kicked his fallen gun out of the way. "I thought that it was a shame that a charming guy like Hunter would die at the hand of a presumptuous immortal, but...Not bad himself."

"Always trying to make me jealous, babe," the male vampire commented with what seemed like an eye roll, but Barry was too dizzy to tell for sure. "Alright, Rose, you take care of this pretender, and I'll teach Snart the lesson he's long overdue for."

Barry wasn't hallucinating, the vampire could truly walk through a mirror.

"You didn't know that vampires could do that, did you?" The one called Rose asked as she crouched next to his prone form, making him even dizzier as she looked into his eyes. "All of us immortals have magic running through our veins, but only vampires can truly tap into that source of power, especially when we suck on the blood of meta-humans."

What a sacrilege, and definitely a crime to the Cohabitation rules. How was The Coalition allowing this? It was bad enough that vampires fed on humans, but meta-humans? Who were those victims?

"We know that it's forbidden," the female declared as if she sensed his outrage as she loomed over him, "but we had to climb the ranks fast to be able to get our revenge on Leonard—hey, why are you wearing torn clothes? That's not fashionable..."

She screamed in distress when Barry rolled on his front and deployed his wings, sending her flying to the side and crashing into a wall. She must have fallen unconscious because Barry's vertigo winked away.

"Cisco," he called after activating his com, "any word from the hunters?"

"A truck full of them is five minutes away," the meta informed him. "Dude, I need to push harder on my training, my powers are taking forever to manifest and I feel useless here—"

"You shouldn't rush into this lifestyle," Barry advised as he unstrapped his other gun and aimed it at the slowly recovering female vampire. "Using your superior intellect to help others remotely is just as noble as slaying supernatural criminals. The Coalition is unlikely to make you a soldier even if you learned combat skills. Meta-humans are too valuable in their eyes to sacrifice on the battlefield."

Indeed, Barry had never heard of a meta-human hunter. All the meta-humans that he knew were scientists, all employees and students of the powerful wizard Harrison Wells, in fact. They spent their days in the spell-protected S.T.A.R. Labs campus creating weapons, drugs and spells that were then used by hunters. Maybe the meta-human leaders were against their people being used for violence, otherwise Barry couldn't fathom why The Coalition wouldn't directly exploit metas' magical prowess. But who knew with The Coalition? Those were the same people who denied the intervention of angels during Thawne's insurgence.

"No!" The vampire from earlier shouted from a mirror as his companion turned into ashes from the bullet Barry put right in her heart.

"Her soul is free, now," the cursed angel pointed out before aiming at the reflective surface from where the male vampire was glaring at him with unhinged hatred.

Barry was fast, but he didn't have eyes in the back of his head, so keeping up with the meta-vampire moving through mirrors and other reflective surfaces across the warehouse proved difficult.

The faint sensation of a spell distracted him for seconds he couldn't afford to waste, and the next thing he knew, the male vampire's hand was crushing his windpipe.

"Die, you bastard," the undead snarled as he drew back his other hand, which was holding a knife.

The blade of another knife lodged itself in the vampire's shoulder, and Barry gasped and coughed right after his opponent dissolved into ashes.

"Are you alright?" The most melodious voice Barry had ever heard down below asked, and he quickly turned around only to frown at an unassuming mortal woman.

She wasn't unattractive, it's just that her voice didn't match her physique. Ah, she had a glamour on, didn't she? Odd, she didn't look like a huntress. She had a camera around her neck, and she was dressed in plain civilian clothes, though who knew what she was wearing under her trench coat.

She couldn't be that member of the trinity, could she? Barry couldn't smell any enhancer from her. In fact, he couldn't tell what she was at all. She smelled like sweat and skin and that was it.

"Who are you?" He asked just as she simultaneously inquired: "Are you Savitar?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris sees the mysterious Savitar in action. He's a dark angel, apparently, and might be her most promising ally yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was time to do a little world-building, so this chapter is longer but only in Iris' POV. I hope that you'll enjoy!
> 
> Warning for descriptions of human-eating habits of supernatural creatures, and brief mentions of blood and seizures.

**Her**

"Who are you?" He asked at the same time as Iris asked if he was Savitar.

The way he frowned at her made Iris wonder if he was aware of the spells masking her identity as well as the smell of her drugs.

The huntress had just gotten a confirmation from Cisco Ramon that Savitar was an immortal: a dark angel. Iris had been skeptical, but she'd seen a winged silhouette glide over the clouds when she was driving close to the warehouse. And now she could see the two wide slits at the back of his coat; it was unlikely that he wanted to make a mundane fashion statement with those.

"I'm Savitar, yes," he confirmed evenly just as Iris heard the quiet, shrilly sound of a vampire moving in smoke form.

Iris unstrapped her gun loaded with garlic-coated bullets, as well as a water gun filled with exorcist acid, most commonly known as holy water, and closed her eyes.

After she located the cursed soul via her superior hearing, she sprayed the thin dark cloud above her...at the same time that Savitar threw her knife at it. The mercury* blade was coated with a layer of pure crystallized garlic oil, so it was as efficient as holy water to force a vampire back into its tangible form.

Savitar had aimed perfectly, but the kill shot was hers.

Iris blinked when only one gunshot was heard, which she'd assumed was hers, but the vampire's body turned to ashes from two distinct wounds: one in the chest and one in the head.

Ignoring the group of sex demons approaching from behind, she looked at Savitar, who stared back at her. A pungent smell of garlic was coming out the barrel of his gun, still pointed in the direction of the disintegrated vampire.

"Who are you?" he repeated, his voice somber but unexpectedly pleasant. 

Snart had been right, the scars actually added to his charm, and the discolored eye was clearly not impaired. Somehow Iris felt sad for the dark angel all the same. Whatever he'd done to be stuck down here with mortals and cursed souls must have been terrible, because surely him continuing his job of protecting humans should've earned him a spot back in heaven? Or whatever the real name of his native dimension was.

"She's the best huntress in all Central City," Leonard Snart was the one to answer as he approached, only five of his twelve guards still standing.

Right, her cover was blown. She'd saved the incubus from getting bitten earlier, by the very same vampire she'd saved Savitar from.

She hadn't known that vampires could move through mirrors. Was it because they didn't have reflections? She might need to read more about magic now that she had a meta-human friend.

"Huntress," Savitar repeated, and Iris sighed internally.

She wanted her name to be widely known eventually, but not now that her contribution to the peace effort was still insignificant. And she didn't want shady immortals like Snart or Savitar knowing where to find her. At least Snart was a confirmed ally. She couldn't tell about Savitar. What did she know about dark angels? Nothing, because The Coalition's archives mentioned next to nothing about angels in general, let alone the different categories of angels.

"I never suspected that you were the same journalist friend you were talking about," the incubus confessed. "I thought all of you hunters were coppers?"

"Ideally, yes," Iris confirmed as she bent down to pick up her throwing knife. "That's one of the reasons why I quit The Coalition. Hunters don't get paid, so really it's all about getting honored when you fall in battle. But non-cops don't get public recognition for keeping the peace between mortals and immortals. I didn't see the point of staying with an institution who doesn't value me, only my anonymous contribution to the cause."

"You're not supposed to do it for the glory," Savitar argued flatly as he shoved his gun back into the holster strapped to his thigh. "Pride is a capital sin. You'll never evolve to a higher plane of existence if your soul is attached to recognition in this world."

"Then it's a good thing that I don't give a shit about ascension," Iris immediately lashed out, tilting her head in defiance when the dark angel frowned. "What would be the point? Even you angels get sent right back here when things are bad. And angels like you get stuck here afterwards. I wonder why? Did your soul get attached to this world too? Are you speaking from experience?"

"I only care for you mortals to stop denying our existence," Savitar replied sharply.

"Woah, woah, hang on!" Snart exclaimed before pointing a finger at the dark angel. "You're an angel?"

Savitar didn't reply. He simply walked back to the trucks of humans—damn, Iris could smell their misery and terrible traveling conditions from here—picking up his other gun on the way.

"So stuck up," Snart commented with an eye roll. "See, Miss Huntress? He needs to get laid. You two have great chemistry already, so—Hey! Wait up, those are my future employees!" He then shouted as he jogged after Savitar.

"They probably have real jobs, already," Iris pointed out as she followed him to the trucks. "They don't need to be further humiliated from this ordeal by becoming your prostitutes."

"Looking down on sex-workers, really?" The incubus chided her. "Without them, the peace you hunters fight for would be non-existent. Thawne must fuck at least one mortal per week to keep his blood pressure at zero, before he sucks them dry, that is. A stress-free Thawne is a peaceful Thawne."

"Yet you intercepted what must be his season's supply!" A familiar, authoritative male voice shouted from the entrance of the warehouse.

David Singh. For some reason, Iris preferred calling him Singh rather than David in her head.

"Oh, two of the trinity in the same place," Snart quipped. "Why don't you wear a deodorant like Miss Huntress here, Mister Hunter? Your stench is going to attract desperate sirens."

"I can deal with sirens," Singh reassured as he approached with a gait that hinted at his power, his face hidden beneath a mask and a hood. "And I can deal with wayward sex-demons. What I can't deal with is a rogue huntress, the guy who killed Zoom and the son of an incubus leader pissing off the vampires! What the hell were you thinking, Iris?" He questioned sharply as he angled his body towards her.

"Iris," Savitar repeated, and Iris saw Singh's head whip toward the dark angel's voice just like her.

A weird sense of dejà vu made her briefly wonder if she'd met the mysterious immortal somewhere else. Maybe in passing at S.T.A.R. Labs? She'd just made the acquaintance of Cisco Ramon, but maybe she'd been in the same room as Savitar without knowing. Something about his voice felt very familiar.

"Pretty name," Snart complimented before recognition sparked in his eyes. "Oh, you're Iris West! You've written articles about my heists. Always pleased to meet a fan!"

"Thanks for blowing my cover, Captain," Iris deadpanned with a glare at Singh, who just rolled his eyes.

"You can defend yourself from stalkers," he pointed out before waving a finger at the three trucks. "We'll take things from here, all of you step aside."

A whole group of fully geared hunters walked into the warehouse, and Iris saw Snart's men tense up, but all five stood their ground just like their leader.

"Not too happy about you tipping off your ex-colleagues, Miss Huntress," the incubus lamented under his breath. 

"Of course I didn't tell them anything!" Iris denied at normal volume. "I knew they'd just send those poor people back on the way they were headed! This is so wrong!" She shouted in Singh's face.

"I'm the one who tipped off the hunters," Savitar said as he stood in front of a truck backdoor and crossed his arms over his chest.

Iris heard Snart sigh along with her.

"I did it because I expected you to stop the confrontation of the cursed souls," the dark angel specified with his mismatched eyes locked on Singh. "I'll take care of the mortals."

Oh, alright, it sounded like he'd had a good plan initially. Too bad he'd clearly not expected to need backup to transport the victims back to safety.

Iris had only expected one truck herself. If only she'd showed up a few minutes earlier, they could've split the occupants of the third truck between the other two...

"West, tell your friends here whose turf we're all standing on," David instructed.

She hated the condescending air he took with her, just because he was cop and she a journalist. She was stronger than him! Was he even training Kamilla, who was probably slacking off while enjoying her life as a student at CCU?

"While the docks belong to the wendigos and sirens, the shipment yard and its connecting infrastructures are Coalition turf due to them being a trade zone," Iris begrudgingly recited. "Immortals are allowed to occupy this zone as long as they comply with hunters' directives."

"And my directive is for you to get the hell out of here before I decide that your altercation with the vampires qualifies as an act of war," Singh deadpanned. "That includes you, Iris. Feel free to help immortals clean up their borders, but don't interfere with their internal affairs! That's against the Law!"

"These people are going to die if you send them to Thawne!" Iris pointed out, outraged.

"Ninety-eight percent of donor catchers are low-ranked vampires," Singh reminded her. "A person who follows a healthy lifestyle cannot be hypnotized by those wimps, who are only let lose after curfew and are confined to vampire turf. That means that the men and women in those trucks broke the Cohabitation Law. Public reports warn citizens that the survival rate of law-breakers is an abysmal two percent. Anyone underage will be sent back home, but the rest will be left to their fate. They knew what they were doing. Many of them are vampire groupies, anyways."

"Thawne doesn't even have a seat at the conference table!" Iris pointed out. "Why can't you just let Snart take them? There are no vampires left undead to tell Thawne what happened here."

"One vampire changed into a bat and escaped," one of the hunters, Calum Wiere by the sound of it, corrected her. "So it's only a question of time before a general shows up to claim Thawne's livestock."

"Did you just call your fellow human beings 'livestock'?" Snart asked with a scoff. "Charming."

Disgusting rather, but Iris used to speak like that too, when she was still a mindless, obedient little soldier for The Coalition. Before she learned real human and journalistic ethics from Eric Larkin, she used to put people into categories too, just like cops. She didn't see them as individual human beings, she saw them as numbers, as stats, because it was easier to get the job done. Sentimentality was the death of duty. Hunters served the higher purpose to make life on earth peaceful for as many people as possible. Even if heaven existed, it wasn't for everyone, whereas this plane of existence was. Central City was everyone's, so it was in everyone's best interest to follow the Cohabitation Law.

Fuck the Cohabitation Law and fuck The Coalition.

"Vibe, come in," Savitar spoke up after pressing a finger to his ear. "A vampire in bat form left the warehouse between ten and five minutes ago—yes, do you have eyes on it? Will it pass by your location? When? Alright, I need you to do a test run of the sonar you've been working on...Yes, right now. No, there's no time to ask for you leader's authorization, I'll take full responsibility for any fallout."

"What is he doing?" Wiere asked, just as Snart happily breathed out: "son of a gun!"

"What's your rules for trespassing vampires?" Savitar kept talking in his earpiece, pausing to hear that Vibe fellow's response. "Alright, I'll free the soul myself, drop the vampire. With a sonar blast, of course. Yes, I'm sure."

"What the—!" Wiere was about to curse out, but Singh shut him up with a sharp movement of his wrist.

Everyone waited with bated breath for the dark angel to show any sign that his plan had worked. From what Iris could piece together, he was asking someone to knock out the escaped vampire with weaponized sound waves so that the vampire would fall in non-vampire territory. Fully established vampires rarely trespassed anywhere because their curse forbade it, they usually had to trick their way into a new place. Trespassing vampires were slayed soon after getting reported, no question asked. Not that Thawne ever sent anyone to plead the freedom of any member of his coven, in any case.

"Well done," the dark angel finally commented after almost a minute of silence. He sounded pleased, but he didn't smile. "I owe you one, Vibe. Yes, I'll be there in..." he looked at his audience, and frowned. "Not immediately, actually, so keep the sonar on. Yes I found the humans, and I need to relocate them first. Then I'll come to you...Copy that. Savitar out."

Iris wanted to kiss the guy. He'd taken care of the vampire messenger! Thawne wouldn't know what happened to his trucks, not unless someone snitched.

"Lucky bastards," Singh commented evenly before pivoting on his heels. "Let's ride back, guys."

"You've gotta be kidding me," some hunter Iris didn't recognize commented but still followed Singh along with everybody else. All were obedient soldiers who followed the chain of command regardless of their personal opinions.

"You know, I'll gladly help you relocate all fifty-two of these poor mortals," Snart proposed to Savitar as soon as the hunters were out of earshot. "In exchange, I'll employ any one of them who'd like to work in the entertainment business."

"They're all drugged," Iris pointed out with a glare at the incubus, before she turned towards Savitar. "If we move the occupants of one truck to the two others, I can drive one and you the other."

The dark angel's face wasn't very expressive, but he nodded and opened the truck bed he was standing by.

"Come on, Sav, ten mortals only," Snart bargained. "As a fee for my match-making services! See, I found you the girl of your dreams: strong and righteous, just like you, and who knows? She might not be ugly underneath that glamour spell of hers. Neither of you would've been here if not for me."

"I came here using my own intel," Savitar pointed out as he helped two people step out of the truck.

"What was your plan, by the way?" Iris questioned the incubus just as she started helping the stumbling and afraid kidnapped people too. "Piss off Thawne, then what? That was so reckless!"

"Would've framed my dad for it," Snart actually let her know. "Thawne would've simply sent one of his generals to kill him, but wouldn't bother getting donors back from us. I would've celebrated my effortless takeover with an orgy including the prettiest of my new employees...Do you even have anywhere to hide fifty-two stinky and whiny humans before Thawne sends a search party? Don't these trucks have GPS?"

"Snart, get lost," Savitar commanded in a very neutral tone, but the incubus didn't insist.

Iris felt bad for him. After all, he'd lost seven of his loyal men, whom he'd overfed sex energy and enhancer drugs to be able to fight off vampires.

Snart was no immortal role model: people died during his heists. But those were armed people who valued their jobs or the prized objects being stolen over their own lives. Sex-demons took decent care of their donors because they needed them alive to keep providing sex energy, but Leonard Snart himself took extra good care of his sex-workers. Rich mortals and sex-demons alike frequented his luxury strip clubs, which were located on Coalition turf because it was safer for all. But that made the rent of the clubs expensive, and with no financial support from his father, Snart couldn't possibly be making a lot of profit. All that because he had principles.

"Hey, Snart?" Iris called out before the incubus walked out of the warehouse.

"Don't worry Miss Huntress, your secret identity is safe with us six," he reassured her.

Ah, good to know.

"The original plan still stands, you know?" She offered. "Find a good place to ambush your father and his lackeys. I'll take care of the lackeys, while you'll deal with your father. Straightforward coup d'état."

The incubus leader sighed, shook his head then waved at her as he kept walking.

"We'll see, Miss Huntress," he replied without an ounce of enthusiasm, and that had Iris confused for the rest of the time she and Savitar loaded eighteen people from truck number three into the two other trucks.

"We'll drop them at four different curfew shelters," the dark angel instructed as he used an honest-to-God paper map to show their itinerary.

The trucks GPS had been destroyed, but didn't he have a smartphone?

"Here, here, here, and here," Savitar pointed with a long finger.

He had nice, large hands with long and elegant fingers. Iris knew that they were dexterous in combat, so in bed...

"Wait, why don't I know any of these shelters?" She realized as she shook her head then squinted at the four points on the map he'd indicated.

Iris knew all curfew shelters because it was around those areas that criminal immortals lurked sometimes, hoping to catch careless humans who didn't check-in exactly by twenty-three hundred** and not a second later. Hunters didn't patrol the areas because they weren't as dangerous as immortal turf borders, and because they didn't want to interfere with immortals catching law-breaking humans.

"Because you're a Coalition soldier, rogue or not," Savitar answered her question bluntly. "Many mortals are cautious enough not to trust The Coalition, so they rely on their own resources to protect themselves from cursed souls."

"Those are the people you work with?" Iris asked, ignoring the offense. "And those are places where you hide, right? The Coalition has been vainly trying to tail you. Of course they don't know that you can fly, so they've never looked up."

He didn't make any comment at all, just tapped the four spots again—Iris had already committed the locations to memory—and gave her a burner phone to keep in touch during the ride. Once they exited the warehouse they took different routes to reach the shelters at different times.

They didn't say much at all, only checked in after dropping six to seven people at each location, and reported that there were sirens following them by car, the same groups since they'd left the warehouse.

Vampires were allergic to the sirens, but sirens didn't hate vampires, quite the contrary: unlike the wendigos who favored people's 'fresh' internal organs, or the merpeople who favored people's skin and bones, the sirens sustained themselves on just any part of the human body, as long as it wasn't rotten. This meant that the discarded corpses of vampires' donors were a sure source of food for them. No soul was ever seen around sirens' territory at night, so it was hard for sirens to feed regularly. That's why sirens were the smallest group of immortals in Central City: they didn't have enough prey to sustain a larger population. They and the merpeople were the weakest among the cursed souls, but at least merpeople could swim to more abundant shores. 

So Iris understood why those sirens would break Cohabitation Law by trespassing on human and meta-human turf to provide intel to the vampires: they were desperate. They were hungry, starving. Iris didn't like to think about these creature's feeding habits, but she'd hoped that making them neighbors with the wendigos would've helped them get undertable crumbs from the stronger and better predators. Clearly it hadn't: sirens weren't greedy, so they wouldn't risk being hunted for extras.

"I'll free your souls soon, I promise," the huntress whispered on her way to the last shelter where she and Savitar were supposed to both end up before discarding the trucks.

Once they were done settling the drugged humans, Iris offered her suggestion on how to tackle the sirens' problem when they were still in the shelter.

"They'll try to reach the vampires as soon as we leave, so we should tail them in return, but free their souls before they get to vampire turf. There are two groups, so we take care of one group each."

Savitar was about to comment on her idea when the person Iris supposed was the shelter manager came over to thank them for rescuing the kidnapped people. The huntress was surprised to see the dark angel shift his position so that only his left side was facing the older woman, who sounded quite familiar with him even though she was keeping her distance.

"I wish I'd been born a meta," the lady lamented with levity. "I could've had powers! Not necessarily to look forever young like you, Barry, but to help more. I'm almost done with nursing school, though. I wish I could've helped back when Dr. Allen was in charge..."

"My dad would be so proud of you, Rita, and my mother too," Savitar claimed, and finally he smiled, and he talked with hand gestures.  


Iris was fascinated by the persona he'd created in order to mingle with mortals. The lady had called him Barry, and his father had been Dr. Allen, so Barry Allen? Odd first name, but overall it sounded nice. Savitar had to be his real name, right? Iris did know that angels only had one unique first name, and sometimes a nickname.

Wait, how did she know that? Had she read it in the scarce books—woah, that group of people dressed in black and gold armor who came out of nowhere were definitely a hallucination. Plus her back was getting sore for no reason, and she felt like climbing up somewhere.

"Shit," Iris cursed quietly as she reached for an inner pocket of her trench coat, retrieving a bottle of her pills.

She was about to pop two when Savitar replaced the lid of the bottle with his fingers.

"Excuse-me?" Iris reacted, irked that her dose of enhancer had clearly run out early, and also that her new not-so-friendly ally was preventing her from making the hallucination stop.

_ The people in black and gold were clearly some ancient warriors because they had swords and spears and bows and arrows, though one of them had a red and gold armor and a huge, double-bladed sword strapped to his back. Huh, the back of his armor had vertical gaps on either side of the sword, wasn't that dangerous? A good archer could line up two or three arrows horizontally across those gaps, they were quite wide. Now that she looked again, all the warriors had those gaps on their backs._

_ "Flash! Flash! Flash!" the crowd chanted around the guy with the double sword, and he waved at all, his back to Iris, then he started looking around.  
_

"How many spells are you on?" Savitar questioned her sternly. "The glamour, the spell masking the smell of your enhancer drugs, then whatever this spell is? That's dangerous for a regular human, for any mortal in fact!"

"What? That's not a spell, those are my enhancer drugs," Iris corrected him as she frowned at the Flash guy from the hallucination.

_ He removed his helmet, probably to better look for whoever he was trying to find, and the haircut was different, but the color was the same dark chestnut with auburn highlights, and they had those same freckles at the back of the neck, and they had the same height...that Flash guy and Savitar, she meant. _

"Huntress, those aren't mundane drugs, they clearly carry a spell," the dark angel claimed as he snatched the bottle and sniffed it.

Iris' brain couldn't process annoyance at Savitar's rude move, because it was too busy short-circuiting at what the withdrawal symptoms were making her imagine.

_ The Flash guy turned to face her, and what the fuck, it was Savitar himself, but with his face intact. And wow, yeah, she'd just seen him smile, but that smile looked special on his uninjured face, it made him look even more handsome but also cute and the way he looked at her... _

Huh?

_ "Iris!" He called out happily before jogging towards her... _

"Huntress!" Savitar called out, and Iris gasped as the hallucination abruptly faded when the dark angel placed his free hand on her shoulder and gently shook her.  


"Is she alright?" Rita was asking.

"Hey, can you hear me? Huntress!" Savitar called again.

"Yes, what?" She replied as she stepped away from him, looking around to make sure that she wasn't hallucinating anymore.

She gasped when she saw the dark angel's face, because now that she'd seen what had looked like his intact face—though it was the fruit of her imagination—he looked so much more pitiful.

She must have expressed her shock at seeing his disfigured face somehow, because he looked away, but he showed her his bad side, probably so that Rita still could only see his good one.

"Sorry, yeah I'm fine, sorry I'm just tired," Iris reassured the older woman, who rushed to say goodbye and leave.

Savitar was still looking down, oh, he was looking at her pills.

"Hey, give those back!" Iris demanded as she stepped towards him.

"Those carry the most complex spell I've ever felt," Savitar argued as he stepped back to maintain the distance between them, his eyes scrutinizing her. "It smells like a combination of at least three spells together, and I only recognize one, which ironically is an amnesia spell."

"Those are enhancer drugs, Savitar," the rogue huntress reiterated as she huffed and propped her fists on her hips. "I've been taking them since I was fifteen, and they don't carry a mixture of spells, but a mixture of drugs."

"My real name isn't Savitar, it's—" the dark angel started, but then his head tilted.

Iris sensed them too, after a few seconds: marine air, bird, melodious voices.

Sirens.

Savitar's mismatched eyes locked with her matched ones, and by the time they nodded in agreement, he'd already returned her pills and had one gun out, screwing a silencer on the barrel. He removed the current magazine next, then loaded what had to be a new magazine of bronze bullets. 

Iris popped her two pills, put the bottle away then pulled out bronze daggers. She didn't have a silencer like him, so using blades was a better option in this residential area.

As she folded up one of her sleeves, Iris noted how the dark angel was fundamentally different from the lookalike she'd hallucinated. That guy in red and gold armor was more charismatic, brighter, and he looked happy. Savitar looked dangerous, dark, and miserable. Broken, and it wasn't just his scarred face that made her say that.

"I'll go through the back," he let her know before moving faster than Iris had ever seen anyone move. She hadn't even seen anything, she'd just felt the wind his movement had generated.

No wonder he'd defeated Zoom.

"Anyone here?" One melodious voice asked.

Iris was only partly immune to siren calls: she didn't do what they commanded, but she couldn't lie if they asked questions.

Which was a good thing: the best way to kill a siren was to use a weapon made in bronze along with the blood of someone charmed by the siren. Iris had never used her own blood to kill a siren: usually she used the blood of an already charmed victim. She never bled much, she was very resilient thanks to the enhancer drugs.

"Yes, over here," Iris replied sincerely as she lightly traced the blade of one dagger across the top of her arm. She coated both blades with the thin stream of blood that came out.

"Angel!" The huntress heard one of the sirens exclaim. "Food from heaven!"

Had Savitar shown them his wings? That was a bit reckless. Hopefully no one was watching this building from their window.

The rogue huntress made quick work of the sirens. They weren't very strong, their power of persuasion was their only weapon, really. It was stronger than vampires'.

"Huh," Iris reacted as she stepped aside to avoid a collision with Savitar in the dark alley where they'd parked the trucks. 

He'd just freed the sirens' souls on his side, effortlessly, so why did he look stunned?

Wait, he looked...Were his eyes glowing?

"Clean that wound!" He ordered as he covered his nose with his long sleeve and took a step back from her.

Iris did, as fast as she could, and switched to her garlic-coated knives.

Savitar's reaction looked like bloodlust! And his scars, hadn't she seen photos of vampires who'd survived sunlight with the same kind of scars?

"You were bitten by a vampire," she realized with dizzying shock. "That's why you're a dark..."

Uh, what? The dizzying part was literal.

"Huntress! Are you alright?" Savitar asked her, sounding concerned but taking yet another step back just as Iris dropped to the floor, seizing lightly.

Shit, shit! What was happening? 

"I told you that having too many spells was dangerous!" The dark angel reprimanded her before pressing a finger to his ear.

"Vibe, Vibe! Come in!" He requested. "I need you to send Dr. Snow to one of the shelters! No, no, I can't ask Rita..."

Oddly, the last thought Iris had before she lost consciousness was that she didn't like that worried expression on Barry's new face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!
> 
> *mercury = quicksilver, supposed to kill werewolves even faster than regular silver
> 
> **twenty-three hundred hours military time = 11:00 PM/23:00


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry worries about his reaction to his new human ally...who isn't human at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More world-building, some background on Barry's earthbound life, and the explanation for how Iris became a hunter who thinks that she's a mortal who's strong thanks to enhancer drugs.

**Him**

Barry dumped another tablespoon of suppressor in his tea, mixed it up quickly and drank the whole thing in one trait.

"That bad?" He heard Cisco ask as he entered the break room.

"Just taking precautions," the dark angel lied to his young mortal friend.

Actually yes, it was that bad. Or rather, that good.

That huntress' blood smelled divine. Barry had reacted to the smell of human fresh blood before, but never like this. When Cisco Ramon's himself had pricked himself with a sharp tool while fine-tuning the sonar last week, Barry had noted that his blood smelled nice. A bit too sweet, obviously because the young scientist consumed an unhealthy amount of candy and other highly processed foods. Unless he ate lots of whole fruit and vegetables too, he probably wasn't immune to the hypnosis of low-rank vampires.

Which was why Barry had quickly freed the soul of the vampire that Cisco had trapped on the grounds of the S.T.A.R. Labs campus. It was the first thing he'd done after following Caitlin Snow back to the meta-human headquarters, to give a peace of mind to all the meta-humans who were still working this late at night.

The trapped vampire had sworn that his master The Reverse Flash would avenge him, and in his fury at the reminder that Thawne had given himself a nickname the way only angels and humans did, Barry had kicked and punched the vampire a few times before mercifully shooting him. Violence was the only thing that made the dark angel feel better nowadays, and it scared him most of the times, but sometimes he just relished it. It was almost worth the guilt that followed.

Barry had thought that lashing out at the cursed soul would've calmed his bloodlust from earlier, especially now that Caitlin Snow had bandaged the rogue huntress' wound, but no.

He could still smell that blood all the way from the break room, two floors above the small infirmary. The scent was extremely pleasing, and though he was overwhelmed by it, Barry somehow also felt soothed by it, which was why he was so alarmed.

Bloodlust was contrary to his nature, so it should make him feel disgusted and guilty. But right now, his body was convinced that all would be well if he'd just go down two floors, wake up the huntress and savor every inch of her body. Because of course it wasn't just bloodlust that was drawing Barry to this Iris West, it was sexual lust too!

He didn't even know what she truly looked like! The generic dark brown hair, olive skin and brown eyes were so obviously from a glamour. And she had so many spells mixed up! One would expect her blood to smell foul from all that magic, but to Barry's dismay it still smelled as exquisite as her voice sounded.

Thankfully Dr. Wells wasn't there to look at Barry with wariness bordering on fear. His wife Dr. Tess Morgan, an exorcist, had been killed by one of Thawne's generals, after all, so he hated and feared vampires like the greatest part of the mortal community. Barry knew that his eyes were glowing right now, and that would terrify the now sole founder and CEO of S.T.A.R. Labs. Cisco and Caitlin weren't phased by his abilities because they were young and impressionable and couldn't wait to have their own powers emerge. They were wide-eyed infants who didn't know war, only love.

They knew loss, though. They'd lost someone when Thawne had persuaded S.T.A.R. Labs people that he was Dr. Wells a year ago. He had then programmed the explosion of the particle accelerator, a machine Dr. Wells had meant to use to help The Coalition make progress on super soldiers research, to make more hunters compatible to enhancers just like the trinity hunters.

Ronald Raymond, Caitlin's fiancé and Cisco's good friend, had been the structural engineer who'd helped build the particle accelerator. He'd managed to mitigate the damage caused by the explosion initiated by Thawne, but he'd done it at the cost of his own life.

What a selfless, noble action, the last in his short life. If Ronald hadn't left so many loved ones behind, he might have ascended right away, probably to the fairies' world rather than the angels because he hadn't been a fighter. Instead, Raymond's soul had probably started a new cycle of mortal life somewhere else in the world. That would be especially true if Caitlin Snow had been his soulmate.

But Barry was convinced that Cisco was Dr. Snow's soulmate. He felt envious of the two young scientists' love at times, even though he did remember the marvelous feeling of his own love with his own soulmate.

Chances were that his beloved had moved on and found another soulmate in their world. Twenty-five years was a very short time for earthbound immortals, but that was because they didn't know love. For angels and fairies, it was exactly like for humans: there was just so long one's soul could go without feeling cherished and cared for and desired. In Central City, Barry had been loved unconditionally by both of his adoptive parents for fifteen years, and when he'd lost Nora to Thawne he'd still had Henry, until a few months ago. Despite receiving the Allens' love, for the entire twenty-five years he'd been stuck on earth Barry had felt alone and broken. He could deal with the brokenness, with the curse Thawne had tried to destroy him with, because that had been a constant reminder of why he'd been sent down here in the first place. What he was supposed to fight for. But the loneliness was unbearable.

If other angels had remained in Central City after Thawne's rampage, they had possibly left during the first ten years that Barry had lived semi-hidden until he could pass for the believable son of Nora and Henry Allen. Otherwise, Barry would've seen them during his hours-long flights over the city. Angels liked to fly. Wings were a third set of limbs that required regular exercise, but it was always enjoyable to unfurl them and enjoy the heat of sunlight and the omnipresent pressure of winds. So there was no way that Barry wouldn't have seen another angel, at least from afar. Yes, he flew mostly at night to avoid sunburns, but on cloudy days he could be out when it was still bright, and during the winter UV lights were tolerable in the big city. But he hadn't seen anyone. He was the only one of his kind.

So Barry had formed alliances with the meta-humans, the only mortals who were somehow independent from The Coalition. They still had to obey the Cohabitation Law and worked closely with them, especially for research, but they had their own leaders: Dr. Tina McGee, Dr. Carla Tannhauser, and Dr. Harrison Wells. Barry had spoken to all three together and separately a few times, and he trusted them. They truly had the betterment of the human condition in mind, unlike The Coalition who only wanted to avoid another city-wide conflict with immortals, and often sacrificed the individually precious lives of a few humans for the sake of the many.

But his association with meta-humans was limited: he hadn't been granted permanent refuge on meta-human turf, only guest rights. Normally earthly laws didn't apply to angels, but Barry was a dark angel, affected by a curse, so depending on which of the meta-human leaders you asked, he qualified as an earthbound immortal. That was the reason why the group as a whole refused to help him figure out a way to reverse his curse without having to kill Thawne.

So when the bloodlust had become a problem right after the trauma of losing Henry, Barry had turned to the least hateful immortal he knew of, who happened to also be the most resourceful: the incubus Leonard Snart.

Then Snart had somehow led him to that rogue huntress, Iris West. Earlier at the warehouse, the incubus had clearly implied that Iris West was the sex partner he'd had in mind for Barry. As much as it disturbed him to agree with a sex-demon, Barry agreed that she'd seemed like a perfect match. She was strong, fast, and he could imagine that she had just as much difficulty as him finding a physically competent partner. What had truly attracted Barry to her, though, was the fact she had broken away from the mindless lifestyle of obeying and respecting the Cohabitation Law at the expense of humane behavior. She'd grown a conscience despite being the most efficient of The Coalition's soldiers. If he didn't mean to form a lasting alliance with the huntress, Barry might have been comfortable with an arrangement based on mutual sexual satisfaction.

However, he did want them to be strong allies. He wanted to train with her, or rather train her because she had very fast reflexes but she couldn't move her entire body as fast has him, and of course she had less experience in combat than him. Together they could definitely get rid of more of Thawne's generals before ridding the earth of Thawne himself. But If they became shield mates and lovers, Barry was quite certain that he'd fall in love with her, and he couldn't afford that. Whether or not his soulmate had moved on from him, Barry wanted to go home after freeing himself from his curse. Therefore, he couldn't get attached to a mortal, couldn't risk getting his soul fully bound to earth through love that wouldn't even last on her side since she was mortal. 

"Hey guys, this is weird," Dr. Snow's voice came in Barry's earpiece, pulling him out of his thoughts.

The bioengineer's voice echoed on Cisco's mini radio as she kept going: "Preliminary testing indicates that—woah! Oh my God!"

The sound of equipment crashing followed the young woman's scream of distress, so Barry sped to the infirmary to see what had happened. He froze for so long at what he found that Cisco caught up to him.

"Dude, what? Wings?!" The engineer exclaimed as he tiptoed around the broken pieces of glass and moved around the span of immaculate feathers to get to his friend. "How come you always help activate other metas' powers but you can't activate ours, huh?"

"Cisco, she's not a meta, that's what I was about to tell you," the bioengineer announced as she let her boyfriend help her up. "Preliminary testing indicates that she's not human at all!"

"She's an angel," Barry whispered as he finally took a step inside the room. "How? When did she come down? I would've felt the arrival of an angel army. Many would've seen it!"

"I'm sure that she's been here for a while actually, because, look," Caitlin instructed as she pointed at a monitor that had been spared by the sudden unfurling of the huntress' wings. 

It was showing the results of Iris West's toxicology test, paired to a spell detector. By all the stars in the cosmos!

"She has so many spells active in her system, it's dizzying," Dr. Snow summarized before running them through the graphs. "Two of the spells were recently activated," Dr. Snow ran the two males through the graphs. "One is a glamour, the other is...Hey! That compound is one of my carriers!"

"Oh, yeah, I forgot to let you know!" Cisco remembered with a snap of his fingers. "She's 'Purple' remember? The hunter who saved my dumb ass two weeks ago? So, uh, I gave her a smell-masking spell three hours ago, took the carrier from your extra stash," he added sheepishly.

"Cisco!" Both Barry and Caitlin chided him.

"She said that she only had a glamour on!" The engineer defended himself. "I made the educated guess that the two spells wouldn't clash!"

"If she'd told the truth, she would've been fine, that's true," Dr. Snow confirmed with a sigh. "But this spell here," she kept going as she showed a curve that broke down into five distinct lines, "which truly is five spells mixed altogether, has been going on constantly for at least twenty years. More testing is needed to identify all the spells, the only fully identified spell right now is one for total amnesia. But the structures of the drugs indicate that two other spells are also mind-altering. A human brain would've fried from such extensive psychic manipulation. And that's just the resilience of her brain. Look at her body's scans. I'm surprised that she got to bleed at all!"

"She did it to herself, to kill sirens," Barry realized. "She had bronze daggers, so she must have used her blood after being charmed..."

Bronze and blood was indeed the best mundane way to kill a siren. Barry himself had used bronze bullets that were spelled for the sole purpose of freeing sirens. Those bullets were still experimental, freshly out of Cisco's workshop, and they'd worked perfectly as he'd trusted them too. Part of Barry's alliance with the meta-humans involved him testing equipment that was then sold to the hunters.

Angels had their own special weapons, which slayed all cursed souls indiscriminately. Barry's own double-sword, Gideon, was actually one of a kind. He couldn't remember what made it—her?—exceptional, but he remembered losing it during his battle against Thawne. Barry suspected that the vampire had kept it for himself. Or maybe The Coalition had found it in the aftermath of the war, and had kept it hidden somewhere remote. Well, Barry had never been to an official Coalition building, so for all he knew they had turned it into some wall art. It could be hidden in plain sight.

The same way that The Coalition had kept other angels hidden in plain sight. The other members of the trinity! That captain from the warehouse, he had to be just like Iris. So there were at least three other angels who'd stayed in Central City after the war. Was Barry's soulmate among them? He'd assumed that she'd left because the protective spell kept losing its potency, but if she'd been spelled to the point of not even knowing who she was, what she was supposed to fight for, who her soulmate was...Of course her love couldn't have fueled the spell to its full effect.

"They did this to us," he concluded, his voice a whisper quietly. "It's not just Thawne: The Coalition cursed us too!"

"Huh?" Cisco reacted as he looked away from the monitor to glance at him, but Barry shook his head.

"Good news is, some spells are spontaneously breaking down because there were just too many clashing in her system at once," Caitlin explained as she pointed at a screen displaying a live feedback of the huntress' vitals. "So far it looks like only the spell altering her physiology is almost completely filtered out, hence the wings. She'll need energy bars like Barry as soon as she wakes up. The mind-altering spells got irreversibly renewed with the new dose though. That's bad, but maybe being in your presence will help her remember, Barry. Can you do that, revive her memory?"

"Not by just standing there or talking to her, no," he answered. "Since we use a different body for every new mission, we do have protocols to revive each other's memory in order to identify our shield mates and soulmates, but they involve physical contact."

"I've been meaning to ask," Cisco chimed in cautiously as he looked at Barry. "How come you haven't broken your amnesia spell? It's pretty simple to do it, right?" He questioned his friend, who was more knowledgeable about spells.

"Well, umm, yeah, sort of," Dr. Snow answered shyly as she threw Barry a sympathetic look, because she certainly knew.

"Then why can't we help him with that?" The engineer suggested. "He's an angel! He's got to know more than the eldest leader of The Coalition! Maybe there are things about Thawne's war that he knows that might help us slay that blood sucker and all his generals once and for all—"

"Help us slay that blood sucker? You, Mr. Gadget, are not going anywhere near any vampire," the beautiful voice of Iris West declared, making Cisco and Caitlin turn towards her while Barry sped back to the door.

His shock had made him forget that he was fighting his attraction to her, but now that he knew who the huntress truly was, he was thoroughly ashamed and felt guilty for his lust.

Cisco was right, breaking his amnesia spell would help clear up so many things for him. That's what he'd partly meant to do by getting a sex partner from Snart. The rogue huntress had been a great match for him...as a human, but not as an angel. Not all angels had soulmates, but many did, and chances were that this one had her own soulmate. Barry hadn't been sure back when he'd first lost his memory, but now he was almost certain that angels adhered to strict monogamy; him reaching rapture with another angel who wasn't his soulmate was a big no. Maybe she was his soulmate, though, and he'd need to talk to her alone to figure that out. He doubted that he'd be so lucky.

"What the fuck—shit!" The huntress exclaimed as she tumbled from her bed and disconnected half of the drips and monitors she had been connected to her body.

"Yeah, she swears like a sailor," Cisco commented when Caitlin gaped at Iris West's language.

Crude language wasn't forbidden among angels, but Barry was sure that very few swore outside of battle on earth. Communication was quite different back home. Verbal language was rarely used.

"Why do I have wings? I have fucking wings! The hell?" The huntress talked in a panic as she turned around, the wayward movement of her wings forcing Cisco and Caitlin to duck and rush to the walls.

Barry had vaguely registered the arrival of another human to the floor a minute ago, but now he was very aware of Dr. Wells' presence as he approached the room.

"Please do not break any more pieces of equipment," the wizard instructed as he waved one hand in the air. "They're quite expensive."

"Dr. Wells!" Iris, Caitlin and Cisco exclaimed, all three of them remaining immobile while all broken pieces of glass gathered in a ball and levitated to the appropriate recycling bin.

"It's a good thing that angels aren't subject to Cohabitation Law," the older meta-human declared as he adjusted his glasses, "otherwise I would be obligated to report the trespass of one on our turf, and the abuse of guest rights of another."

Yeah, it was a good thing that, despite his fear of him, Dr. Wells wasn't the one who counted Barry as a cursed soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After securing a meeting with Joe, Iris learns an odd fact about a Snart, and learns fascinating facts about spiritual evolution.

**Her**

"Dad, we need to...shit! We need to talk!" Iris demanded, cursing when her right wing knocked over a vase in the wide sitting room. She'd gotten too close to the window.

She looked back, and sighed in relief when Cisco dismissively waved his hand without even looking up from his laptop. A wordless assurance her that the piece of decoration wasn't important or expensive. Thank fuck.

"Damn right, we need to talk!" Detective Joe West replied on the other end of the line. "David just called me! What on God's green earth were you doing at that warehouse at the shipyard? Getting involved in a fight opposing incubi and vampire, and whatever species Savitar is! Intercepting one of Thawne's shipment, of all things! Have you lost your damn mind?"

"Savitar's an angel," Iris jumped on the first opportunity to bring up the topic she was calling about. "And I didn't lose my mind, I lost my memory! You. Lied. To. Me. my whole life!"

Well, technically, it had only been twenty-five years of her endless lifespan...That was such a mind-blowing realization: even if she died now, she had a shiny home to head back to.

Right? Heaven was white and shiny? Iris had never given a fuck about ascension, in fact half of the time she didn't even believe in the whole spiritual evolution theory. Was God real? Which religion had it right? Wait, was she supposed to personally know God? He/she/they was or were the one who'd sent her down here, right? Holy shit!

"How?" Was her father's quiet reply.

Jesus Christ on a cross, was Joe West even her father?

"Wait, are you an angel too?" She questioned. "I can't be adopted! I look just like you!"

"Baby girl, where are you?" her dad asked, trying to sound calm as he changed topics,but Iris could hear the panic in his voice. "I can't leave, curfew is in a few minutes and I'm not on patrol tonight. I have to write a report to The Coalition on a crime scene...Oh, you should come to the next meeting with your file on Lewis Snart, I'll get you a pass! You were trying to expose him, right? This murder might very well be connected to his clan..."

"Oh, now you want to hear about my court inadmissible evidence?" Iris drawled, incapable of silencing the bitter laugh that escaped her.

He'd never supported her career as a journalist! He'd threatened to kick her out of the house if she became one, and she'd volunteered to leave herself. Iris knew that her dad was behind Eric Larkin making her use a pen name the whole time that she worked at CCPN. And since CCPN was the only independent news outlet that The Coalition allowed to report on immortals', she'd endured working in anonymity, until she couldn't. Then she'd gone free-lance, had started making a name for herself, and she'd been just fine dealing with low-ranked demons sent to intimidate her. She was one of the trinity, for crying out loud! Without the restriction of her chief editor, she'd uncovered so many crimes perpetrated by immortals, much more serious than the ones she'd been allowed to investigate at CCPN. And when her father or Singh wouldn't open investigations based on her findings because they weren't court-admissible, she'd taken her findings to The Coalition leaders themselves...Only for them to also do nothing because punishing powerful supernaturals for harming 'high risk victims' might 'unnecessarily' threaten the peaceful coexistence between humans and immortals.

And now, Joe West's attempt to keep his daughter out of the spotlight started to make sense.

"Iris, I promise to explain everything," Detective West said, "Tomorrow. Meet me at the house for dinner? I'll make grandma Esther's noodle dish, your favorite."

"Fine," Iris agreed, because anyways she couldn't go anywhere until she got the wings situation under control.

She needed to know who she was. Savitar himself was under a partial amnesia spell so even though they probably knew each other, he couldn't remember her. Unfortunately, those amnesia spells didn't just fade away, and reversing them involved some physical ritual that both Savitar and Dr. Snow had been vague about.

Before Iris could tell the other angel about her illusion of him in red and gold armor or even request they go over the ritual in question, Iris had needed to confirm that all this craziness wasn't just a weird dream. She'd figured out that calling her dad would clear things out. She'd never dreamed of making a phone call that made sense.

To be quite honest, Iris had also needed to put some distance between herself and Savitar, in case this was indeed reality. The dark angel had alternated between staring at her with wide eyes and glancing at her from below his crazy long eyelashes, and it had made her fight a full-body shiver the whole time. From the other side of the infirmary, she'd been able to hear his faster than normal heartbeat and smell what she assumed was his sweat mixed with some expensive cologne because it smelled really good. Like, damn.  


To think that, all this time, she'd thought that her superior senses came from the enhancer drugs.

Dr. Snow had told her that there was no way enhancers could make any human that strong and resilient, and the bioengineer had claimed that Iris hadn't even been at her full potential. The spell cocktail she'd been under for twenty five years had included a physiological suppressor, something that had reigned in not just her wings but also her healing powers. 

That explained why she'd woken up without a trace of the shallow cut on her arm, and why she now could eat like five grown men instead of just two. Thank goodness for the energy bars they'd made for Savitar.

"I hope that you didn't promise to meet your dad tonight," Cisco's voice brought her out of her thoughts, his words partly distorted because he was now sucking on the lollipop reeking of sucrose and artificial strawberry flavor. "It's just past curfew, and we're surrounded by vampire turf on two sides. Don't these guys have an excellent sense of smell?"

"Not as precise as werewolves, but yeah" Iris confirmed. "And no, I'm not going anywhere without fixing this wing situation and trying to get my memory back. My dad only has information about the few days or weeks before I lost my memories, anyways. I need to remember everything else. Central City needs to know that angels never stopped coming down here to help!" She fluttered her wings for emphasis.

From what she'd read about Thawne's rampage, the Coalition had enforced a twenty-four seven curfew when shit went down, so it explained how no one had witnessed the angels arrival. The news would report on all the disobedient humans who went outside and ended up being sucked to death by those vampires. No one was allowed outside until a whole week after the conflict was over. The Coalition asked everyone to be patient as they signed truces with immortals, acknowledged turfs and tended to other bureaucratic duties.

"Holy Molly!" Cisco exclaimed.

"What?" Iris inquired with a frown.

"So, I met this girl at a club two weeks ago, that's why I was out so late the night you saved me from those thirsty bats," he let her know with a shake of his head before he grabbed it with both hands. "We kept in touch afterwards, and she was great you know? Seemed to appreciate my lame jokes."

"But?" Iris prompted him as she approached him cautiously, minding her wings.

"She told me that her name is Lisa...But I didn't know her full name: Elisabeth Snart!" Cisco announced. "I was being preyed on by a succubus! Thank God she lost interest in me. And here I was being a loser stalking her on social media..."

"Wait, what?" Iris exclaimed when she finally got close enough to check his laptop.

Holy! Yeah, that was Leonard Snart's sister and partner in crime. Iris had actually expected to see Lisa at the warehouse earlier. The Snart siblings were literally thick as thieves, and they hated their father with equal passion. Iris suspected that Lewis had abused them when they were kids. That wouldn't be surprising from a cold-blooded murderer.

Something was odd, though...

"Wait, did you say that she lost interest in you?" Iris questioned Cisco, who sighed dejectedly.

"Yeah, three days ago she just stopped replying to my texts and she wouldn't pick up my phone calls...Cut off all forms of communication after keeping in touch every single day," Cisco explained, blushing a bit at the end.

No way, was this what Iris thought it was?

"Cisco, sex-demons don't play long-games with their preys," the rogue huntress informed the meta-human. "They can't resist instant gratification. Even if Lisa wasn't hungry, she would've tried very hard to sleep with you that same night, and I doubt that you could've resisted. The club you went to, was it 'The Hedonist' downtown?"

"Yeah," the young scientist confirmed, looking confused.

"It's Lisa Snart's club," Iris let him know, her journalist instinct warning her that something was amiss. "Not a strip club like her brother's, but it attracts a younger crowd so business is fairly steady. Why would she prey on you, when she could feed on any of her employees or have a fun time with an eager customer?"

"'Cause I'm smarter and cuter?" Cisco joked with a shrug.

"That you are," Iris agreed with a kind smile, "but that wouldn't matter to a succubus. It would matter to a woman, though."

"Succubi aren't human," the meta-human automatically denied. "So Lisa doesn't qualify as a 'woman'."

"I agree, but quite a few Coalition diplomats debate that point," Iris brought up with a shrug of her own. "Sex-demons eat real food until they hit puberty, and they don't need to kill us to feed off of us. They don't turn us either. Most importantly, unless they're starving, they look and act like humans twenty-four seven. So a few of the smaller law-abiding clans have been trying to obtain full human rights."

Until she'd personally met the Snart siblings, Iris had been outraged by the idea. But now she wouldn't mind it too much.

"Huh," was Cisco's shocked reaction. "Well, even if I was amenable to an inter-species romance, Lisa clearly changed her mind about it, so."

"You said that she ghosted you three days ago?" Iris asked as she reflected on her meeting with Snart three nights ago.

He himself had seemed normal, but his bodyguards had been quite on edge. Yes, Iris was strong enough to slay them all, but she wouldn't, she'd established a non-violent agreement with their boss. They hadn't been on such high alert the other times Iris had met with Leonard...and Lisa.

"Couldn't even get a location via her phone GPS," Cisco admitted sheepishly and Iris raised a judging eyebrow at him. "She shared her location with me a few times, so I thought it was okay to...Never mind. She probably changed phones. Whatever. Not like this could've gone anywhere."

"Sure, alright," Iris reacted neutrally before her nose picked up Savitar's scent.

Why couldn't she switch it off? Often times she could instinctively ignore unimportant sensory inputs, like the smell of sucrose and artificial strawberry flavor from the lollipop Cisco was unwrapping right there. The moment she stopped focusing on it, the smell faded away. But she was still aware of Savitar's approaching presence.

"You really should switch to healthier snacks, you know?" She advised Cisco as she propped her fists on her hips. "I bet that you wouldn't have needed my help two weeks ago if you could resist hypnosis. Processed foods are bad for you!"

"I eat healthy enough to have a smooth skin and silky hair, that's all that matters," the meta-human asserted before sucking loudly on his lollipop. "When my powers awaken, those low-rank vampires will be the ones running away from me anyway!"

"Your powers are probably taking so long to awaken because you're feeding garbage to your body," Savitar said as he walked through the open door.

He blinked at Iris.

"Why do you still have your wings out?" He questioned her before breaking eye contact and shoving his hands in the pockets of his long coat.

"Maybe because I don't fucking know how to make them disappear?" Iris provided the obvious answer. "Do you think that I enjoy feeling like a baby bird who doesn't yet know how to fly?"

The dark angel frowned, chanced a glance at her, then looked away again.

What was his problem? Well, other than smelling like a luxury brand perfume! Iris couldn't believe that she'd been able to ignore that scent all evening, but now it was assaulting her nose.

"Think of retracting and lowering your shoulder blades," he advised evenly.

"Right, because it's that simple," Iris drawled before trying all the same.

A rushed flapping sound resonated behind her just air pressure blew across her hair, and she startled as the weight disappeared from her back.

She stared at a lone white feather as it glided to the floor.

"That's so fucking awesome," Cisco commented, clumsily catching his lollipop when his jaw dropped.

"Um, thanks," Iris told Savitar, feeling silly for doubting him.

Why would he bullshit her about angel stuff? He was probably excited to have another angel around, he just took himself too seriously to show it.

Speaking of another angel.

"Singh and Kamilla must be angels, too!" The huntress realized. "Oh my God, all this time The Coalition has been hiding us? Talk about manipulating the narrative!"

"I doubt that it was they're happy about it," Savitar argued. "But we are the perfect soldiers, so keeping you three was worth the risk of Thawne finding out. The smell of the enhancer drugs perfectly masked your scent to other immortals. I'm under a masking spell myself," he added as he lifted a necklace from under his shirt. "As long as we don't show our wings or bleed no one would know...Wait."

"Oh, then the sirens were talking about me?" Iris concluded as she remembered the fight against the cursed souls earlier. "The masking spell was specific to the smell of my drugs, not to the smell of my blood itself."

"Your wound is healed," the dark angel stated the obvious out of the blue, a deep frown splitting his brow.

"Yeah, that's insane," the rogue huntress commented as she looked down at her arm. "I normally heal quickly, but it takes days for all traces of a knife cut to disappear."

"Then why can I still smell you?" Savitar asked, "Your glamour is still working, but..."

"And why can I smell you if you have a masking spell on?" Iris asked when realization hit her belatedly.

"Err, I'll be in the Cortex if you need me," Cisco announced as he quickly closed his laptop and tucked it under his arm before stepping towards the door.

"I'll get you back on Lisa Snart, okay?" Iris told him hurriedly.

"Don't bother, huntress," the engineer replied with a shake of his head. "Wasn't meant to be, anyways," he mumbled as he walked out of sight.

"Lisa Snart? Leonard's sister?" Savitar asked as he leaned away from the wall. "Cisco knows her?"

"I think that they like each other," Iris shared, surprisingly endeared by the romance story.

She'd grown bitter about other people's happiness in the love department, and had hardened her heart once she'd realized that she couldn't have a long-lasting relationship. This empathetic reaction to Cisco's predicament was out of character for her.

Ah. Weren't angels all about love? They fought in the name of love for humanity, right? The Coalition claimed that they'd stopped caring about humans over the centuries because they humans messing up.

"Is anything I learned from the Coalition even true?" Iris asked out loud as she locked gazes with Savitar. "For the past ten years I've believed that they chose me to be one of the enhanced hunters, that they'd felt that I was special and had given me the honor to serve as their best soldier. Me not becoming a cop wasn't their fault, it was my dad's. The Coalition allowed me to work for the only non-Coalition news outlet allowed to report on immortals, I thought that..."

She didn't cry, she wasn't ever going to cry for this, but it hurt all the same! Yeah, the leaders of the organization made controversial decisions all the time and Iris couldn't forgive them for brushing so many crimes under the rug, but she'd thought that they acknowledged her worth! That they'd given her a sense of purpose!

"I've never trusted the Coalition," Savitar admitted after letting out a quiet sigh. "They've lied to people about us, about our involvement in the war against the vampires twenty-five years ago. It's so unrealistic for people to think that mere mortals could've eliminated the brunt of Thawne's army and forced him to retreat."

"The story is that there used to be other enhanced hunters like me who died fighting Thawne's army," Iris recalled. "That's why they never stopped providing me the enhancer drugs even after I quit the organization: it's a lifetime commitment, a vow to fight for peace in case the much stronger immortals decide to turn against us. I knew that a lot of my education as a hunter was just propaganda, but...I can't believe that I didn't see through all this bullshit!"

"You couldn't know better since you couldn't remember anything," the dark angel pointed out. "Huntress, I mean, Iris..."

She really liked the way he said her name...Wait a minute.

"That's my real name," She guessed as she ran a hand through her hair. "At least that hasn't been a lie. I remember you calling my name from my vision—"

"What vision?" Savitar asked excitedly, surprised but also hopeful.

"I don't even understand how that's possible since my amnesia is complete," Iris confessed, "but at the shelter I hallucinated a vision of you in a red and gold armor, with a huge double-bladed sword strapped to your back. Maybe it's just a random hallucination and not a memory. I was just assuming that it was real because the urge to climb high places and the itchy shoulder blades are withdrawal symptoms for my fake enhancer drugs along with the hallucinations, and those were real signs of my wings coming back."

"It is a real memory," Barry confirmed as he slowly stepped closer to her. "I don't remember you or the armor, but I remember the double-bladed sword: Gideon. It, or she, I feel like it's a she, was a special weapon, one of a kind. All weapons wielded by angels can free all kinds of cursed souls. I don't know what made mine special other than its shape, though."

"You looked like you were a leader," Iris recalled, "because the others were in black and gold, not red and gold like you. They called you Flash?"

That made the dark angel freeze, then he stared at her with wide eyes, but he was looking through her, as if remembering something else.

Then his features hardened in an expression of disgust, contempt and fury.

Dark angel, alright.

"That lowest of all wretched souls!" He exclaimed, and the old-fashioned expletive made Iris tilt her head in surprise.

"Thawne named himself after me!" Savitar claimed as he tightly gripped the hair on top of his head. "His nickname is the Reverse Flash, and correct me if I'm wrong but vampires don't have nicknames. They're particular about being called their full names, to be easily identified among members of the same bloodline."

"That's true," Iris confirmed with a nod, "I never questioned the fact that Thawne named himself something special, though. He's a pure blood vampire, which makes him an extreme egomaniac, so him nicknaming himself something grand isn't surprising."

"It can't be a coincidence," the dark angel asserted. "I'd know that I'm right if only I remembered everything!"

"Well, let's get through the ritual, then!" Iris suggested. "I want to remember everything too. It will be easier to convince Kamilla and Singh to do the same if we're on top of things, right? I'll meet my dad tomorrow, he'll explain to me why we were made to forget who we were, it can't just be in order to go with the Coalition's lie about the existence of angels."

"Sex magic is the only way to completely reverse that very strong amnesia spell," he blurted out without looking back at her. 

Iris blinked.

"Sorry, I didn't hear you well," she told him slowly, even though they both knew that it wasn't true.

"That's why I'm still under it," Savitar explained as he turned back to her. "I can't...I'm too strong for most humans, arousal makes me lose control of my strength, and I'm worried that it would trigger my curse. Thankfully I still can't hurt mortals, I just needed to find one who could...That's why I asked Snart to find me an escort girl. Some of them dope themselves to last long enough for incubi, so I thought that..."

"That's why Snart asked me to sleep with you," Iris understood. "Well, he was right, we are a perfect match, we're both angels! So we should...I mean not today, well actually yes today, but maybe with the help of a little liquor..."

"We can't get drunk, and I'd rather we didn't do it right now," the dark angel whispered as he searched her eyes then sighed loudly.

"What do you mean, 'not right now'...Oh," Iris said.

She still had her glamour on. She herself couldn't see what the spell made her look like, but Cisco had told her: tanned skin, brown hair and brown eyes, five foot five, easily forgettable features.

"Well, the glamour should fade away anytime now," she estimated as she nervously passed a hand through her hair. "I'm not bad to look at, I promise. I mean, all angels must be good-looking right? You're really handsome yourself. Ah, I'm not trying to come onto you or anything—wait, yes, actually, I'm coming onto you, um..."

"Iris," he sighed her name before dropping onto a couch and dropping his face in his open hands.

Okay, she was glad that they were going to do it because the way his voice affected her was a bit embarrassing.

"Fuck," he cursed when he lifted his head and stared at...her crotch?

Oh, shit, he could smell her arousal! Iris had never been so mortified!

"Sorry, I must be so creepy to you," he apologized while rubbing a hand down his face then shaking his head. "But there's no doubt to me: you're my soulmate. You're my beloved, the reason I didn't completely turn," he added with emotion.

"What?" Iris reacted in shock.

"The fact that I called your name in your memory of me, and that we react to each other so strongly is hard proof," he claimed before revealing his necklace one more time. "Unlike your glamour, my masking spell is conditional. My adoptive mother had it made for me, and only the souls to which I'm bound by love can see through it. You likely didn't notice any particular scent from me in the warehouse, but now you should."

"That's true," Iris confirmed in a whisper.

Savitar let out a humorless laughter, and lowered his head again.

"I was getting so desperate," he recounted quietly. "Every single year Thawne's curse was gaining on me, and I thought that my protective spell was fading because you'd moved on, because you'd found another lover. Thawne killed my mother without knowing her connection to me, but he severed the love bond we'd formed over the years, which had strengthened my protective spell. Then a few months back, Thawne sent Zoom to kill my father after he learned that I was someone saved by the exorcist he'd killed before. Another love bond severed, and that's when I started experiencing bloodlust. I knew that it was only a question of time before I turned into a vampire. And there's no one strong enough to free my soul if I did. My only option was to kill Thawne, and I'm not sure that I'm strong enough, or even fast enough to get to him in the first place. But now I have another option."

Iris didn't know what to say.

Of course she was madly attracted to Savitar, and she wanted to know more about him, but the emotional connection wasn't there yet. She was thrilled by the idea of reuniting with her lover of several centuries or even millennia, but it was the same type of giddiness she felt for Cisco and Lisa Snart.

Speaking of Lisa Snart.

"Hey, when was the last time you saw Lisa Snart?" She asked the dark angel. "Cisco said that she ghosted him, and Leonard Snart seemed desperate tonight, not just about his plan to pin the theft of Thawne's shipment on his dad but about getting a few donors. He must have overfed his men and himself to hold his own against vampires. Well, you and I killed the strongest of that group, it seemed."

"It is strange that Lisa Snart wasn't part of the group tonight," Savitar agreed. "As a succubus she can accumulate much more energy than her brother's henchmen. She should've been there to help."

Just then Iris' phone vibrated in the pocket of her borrowed sweatpants.

Speaking of a demon.

"It's Snart," she informed Savitar before accepting the phone call. "Hey."

"Need...need your help," the incubus spoke up quietly, sounding...weak?

"I'll owe y-you big time, Miss Huntress," he added before going silent, and Iris' ear picked up sounds of a physical altercation.

"Cisco!" Was all Iris heard from Savitar before he was gone in a gust of wind, and he'd taken her phone!

"To trace the call," she realized as she jogged out of the break room and towards the Cortex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry about Lisa Snart, Killervibe is endgame!
> 
> I hope that everyone's staying safe! Please take good care my friends ❤


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He'd know that he hadn't been ready to face Thawne...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thawne is his own warning 🙃
> 
> Other warning for mentions of blood, mild gore and violence.

**Him**

"I'm coming with you!" Iris announced as she joined him on the roof the very moment he'd deployed his wings.

He'd heard her coming, but he hadn't been prepared for her shock at the sight of his dark wings.

He quickly retracted them.

"It's okay!" She assured him, her voice as soft as the late Fall breeze ruffling his hair.

He used to like the cool weather, less oppressive sunlight and of course the twirling gold and red colors. Fall had been Nora's favorite's season.

After her death, he'd only pretended to enjoy his walks with Henry, when all he'd wanted ever since the exorcist had left their lives was to take the head of the soul responsible for their loss: Eobard Thawne.

But embracing his hatred for the vampire in front of Iris made him feel like a sinner. Angels weren't supposed to hate cursed souls, only to sympathize with them and consequently free them.

"It's okay, look at me," she gently ordered him, and he turned his eyes away from the horizon and looked into her fake eyes with his mismatched ones.

She moved quickly, one second several feet away, the next close enough to reach out with her hand and gently place her palm on the scarred side of his face.

"Let me help you," she requested as she ran her thumb over his raised skin.

He gasped, unusually sensitive through the damaged tissue.

She smelled so good, and was he imagining it, or was she getting softer as time went by? He was looking forward to the moment when her body worked through the last dose of her reversible mind-altering spells.

But until he shared rapture with her, she wouldn't truly be his soulmate. He liked Iris West the rogue huntress well enough, but he was eager to reunite with the Iris he had forgotten. The Iris he would remember after going through the most pleasurable human experience with her.

"No, you can't come with me," he broke his own heart by denying her. "You don't know how to fly, and even if you did every immortal on the way to Snart's location is going to catch your scent in the wind. Your glamour is about to fade, and you're a public figure, Iris West."

By the way: he'd accurately guessed that his soulmate's name would sound much better than his.

"I could single-handedly decimate the entire Snart clan," he reminded her. "Lewis Snart and his subordinates are going to be a piece of cake. I'll be back soon."

She still had her hand on his face, and he didn't dare move until she herself took a step back.

"You better come back before sunrise, Savitar," she warned, and she must have seen the hurt in his eyes because her eyes widened and she drew her hand back.

'Savitar' wasn't his true name. It was the name he'd chosen to separate his personality as a dark angel from the original version of himself.

'Flash' sounded better to him. It was a good thing that he hadn't remembered it, though. Without Iris by his side, he would've been devastated to feel any more connected to Thawne.

"I only wanted to say that because an old fantasy of mine was to wake up next to an angel," Iris rushed to explain as she placed her hand on his covered arm this time. "Sorry, I didn't mean to make fun of your curse. Incomplete curse."

He could hear the sincerity in her voice, but he wished that her glamour would fade away. He'd very much like to see the temporary but true face of his beloved.

And he'd very much like to wake up in bed with her. Not next to her, but rather below her, or maybe between her legs. He'd almost lost it, not even ten minutes ago, when he'd smelled her arousal. Before Henry's death, he'd thought that he'd grown cold, incapable of sexual desire. Afterwards, he'd only experienced bloodlust, and it had disgusted and terrified him. But lusting after the huntress had been a different experience, and of course it had been: she was his soulmate.

"Hurry back, Savitar," Iris instructed him.

"It's Barry," he corrected her in a whisper. "My real name is Barry."

"Oh," she reacted softly, then smiled widely.

He couldn't wait to see that smile on her real face.

"Hurry back, Barry," she rephrased, and he unfurled his wings once she was at a safe distance.

"As fast as I can," he promised before pushing off with one foot and soaring through the air.

The night was cloudy, so he doubted that anyone saw him on his three minute flight to sex-demon turf. Running would've been faster, true, but flying allowed him to find vantage points more easily, and gave him the time to detect unusual sounds, sights and scents.

And to detect the familiar but still mysterious vibrations of magic, like he was feeling now as he found the rundown building where Snart was supposed to be.

All supernaturals were creatures of dark magic, granted, but none of them had any predilection for spells, enchantments and potions. Certainly, none of them were strong enough to shroud the entire building in a sensory fog. Barry couldn't even tell if anyone was inside, but Cisco's GPS monitor was showing that Snart's cell phone was being moved around on one of the floors.

(Technology had come a long way in this world. Barry vaguely remembered fighting a war at a time when the most sophisticated human invention was the trap mechanism of the pyramids.)

He plucked out one of his feathers and dropped it on the floor while he was still poised at the window sill.

A faint yellow-green light rose from the dusty floor when the feather touched it. Barry was not well-versed in magic but he was quite sure that it meant that someone in the building knew that he'd arrived.

So he sped through the building and stopped in front of a locked door from where he could hear the sound of a steady heartbeat and quite a few other fainter and irregular heartbeats. He forced the door open, and almost retched at the smell of human blood that assaulted his nose.

"What are you doing here?" He heard Lisa Snart's voice ask from a corner of the room as he took quick breaths with his hand cupping his nose.

She seemed to be the only person not bleeding in that place, but Barry couldn't tell for sure. The sight of human bodies being piled up on top of a dark red pool of still warm blood was making him dizzy with revulsion.

What a macabre way to confirm that only Iris' blood could turn him on.

Leonard's younger sister was tied up to an old heater, and the faint streetlights filtering through this other broken window were enough for Barry to see that she was bruised all over.

"Where are your father and brother?" He asked right before he heard a loud crash from a few rooms over.

He sped to untie the succubus, and shakily checked the pulse of all...twelve humans, because all he could hear was his own blood rushing in his ear and the physical fight happening not far away.

Three dead, nine alive but very weak. Their chances of surviving long enough to be rescued weren't promising, but Barry texted Cisco to tip off the hunters all the same.

"Go," he ordered Snart the daughter once he put his phone back in his pocket, but she shook her head.

"Not without my brother," she declared as she gingerly rose on her feet and wobbled to the window, clearly not in a state to fight. "Give me one of your guns, Savitar. I can at least shoot a few vampires."

"Vampires?" He repeated in alarm before instincts kicked in and he silently shot a few bullets behind him without looking.

When he did, it was to see two vampires hit the floor and turn into ashes.

"Or, you can kill them all by yourself while I call for backup," Lisa changed her mind. "Cell phone?"

Frowning, Barry approached the window just in time to see multiple cars round the corner—it seemed that the spell worked both ways, he couldn't hear anything. After making sure to replace the bronze bullets magazine with the one containing garlic-coated ammunitions, he gave Lisa Snart one of his burner phones and his second gun just as sex demons emerged from the vehicles. 

He didn't recognize any of the incubi, so they were probably Lewis' subordinates.

"How many vampires are there?" He questioned Lisa, but she shrugged before she started speaking on the phone.

Vampires outside of their own turfs and trespassing into another? This building was far into sex-demon turf, not at some border with vampire territory. That was unheard of. Actually, the last time it had happen was—

Another crash jolted the dark angel out of his thoughts, and he cautiously walked out of the room with the bleeding bodies and headed to the half open door of the room where Snart father and son were throwing punches and kicks at each other.

(It was a blessing that cursed souls somehow didn't care for the use of weapons, even though angels and hunters heavily relied on them. It was their pride as earthbound immortals that made them want to prove themselves vastly superior to those who were objectively more spiritually evolved.

Or maybe it was because none of them wanted their victims to die prematurely. Cursed souls all preferred humans to be alive and wide awake before having their ways with them.)

"You would use the help of a female mortal to kill me?" Lewis hissed after staggering backward from a powerful kick. "I should've killed you before you'd dishonor the clan with such sacrilegious methods! But I drew the line at slaying my own kin!"

"We're already cursed, what difference would kinslaying make, huh?" Leonard quipped before evading his father's punch, then catching him by the arm to throw him at the wall on the other side of the room.

Barry was surprised that the younger Snart looked much stronger than he'd sounded on the phone.

"The vampires are the most wretched of us!" Snart the father pointed out as he stood back up from crashing down. "Cold as Death, who herself refuses to claim them because they're that disgusting, and they can shape-shift into fucking smoke, that's worst than the darkest witchcraft! And Thawne? That blood-sucker is evil incarnate!" He ranted on before surging towards his son.

Thawne? Why were they talking about him?

"My new buddy Savitar will eventually take care of that sadist," Snart the son predicted after taking down his father with a brutal hit of an elbow right in the back of the neck. "But don't you worry, my plans to have Thawne rip you apart was thwarted, and the huntress will only arrive on time to take care of your stupidly loyal goons. I'll kill you myself."

Right, Leonard Snart had planed on framing his father for the disappearance of the kidnapped humans.

"And your tirade about vampires is hypocritical at best, don't you think? You're the most wretched immortal in this city for killing your own donors just so I wouldn't feed on their energy! You bastard!" Leonard shouted as he kicked his father who was already on the floor. "And you dared raise a hand against Lisa! I'll kill you very slowly after I get rid of these trespassing vampires!"

This vampire invasion was starting to worry Barry.

"How did vampires get here, Snart?" He therefore asked as he kept his sense on alert for the odd sound of shape-shifted vampires. In their regular forms they made no sound at all unless they wished to.

"What the fuck?" Snart the son exclaimed, his eyes wide with shock. "How did you get he-!"

He toppled to the floor after his father kicked his feet, and Barry aimed his gun at Lewis Snart as he stood back up and just like his son earlier, patted himself clean. Then he stood to his unimpressive height and looked Barry up and down, unbothered by the weapon pointed at him.

Sex-demons didn't have any particular weakness. They died just like regular mortals as soon as they ran out of sex energy.

"So, you are the mysterious Savitar," the incubus clan leader stated calmly, squinting his eyes. "You know, if I couldn't hear that freaky fast heartbeat of yours, I'd say that you're a vampire, same as Thawne."

Barry opened his mouth to warn the incubus against comparing him to the vampire when all his senses screamed a warning at him instead. But they still were too slow for him to move out of the way before someone punched him in the jaw, sending him to skid across the dirty floor and hit his head against the wall below a window.

He didn't lose consciousness despite the intense pain at the back of his skull and his jaw. However, he couldn't move, and his vision remained blurry even after he blinked his eyes multiple times...

Magic. His assailant had hit him with some type of enchanted object and he was now paralyzed.

There was no need to wonder who could've been so fast that the dark angel hadn't seen them at all.

Barry was still able to hear the two Snarts let out a series of expletives, and felt a presence appear at the window above him. A bat? No, two bats.

For what he assumed were the next few minutes, a confrontation opposed the two newly arrived vampires to the Snarts, Lisa included because Barry heard the muted sound of one of his guns. Her brother or father must have picked up his other gun because he kept hearing shots for a while, even as more sex-demons entered the room.

It got quiet too fast...

Oh, that's because Barry did lose consciousness then.

He woke up in another room, in a different building and possibly on a different turf. Before even opening his eyes he took stock of his physical condition.

He was thirsty, as if he hadn't had water in several days, but the growl of his stomach suggested that it had only been a few hours since he'd passed out. He'd sustained multiple hits, he felt battered and bruised all over. Without even opening his eyes, he could tell that his bound ankle was chained to a ring on the wall he was sitting against. And worst of all, an oppressive heat was prickling his skin...

He had to blink his eyes when he opened them, not just because of the bright UV light above his head, but also because Eobard Thawne was standing in front of him not far from the only door in the room, in the shadow of the artificial light. Barry had vaguely remembered the blonde hair and blue eyes, but his memory of him involved a face twisted in fury and his mouth wet with Barry's blood, and eyes straight from one of the humans' worst horror movies.

Presently, the powerful vampire looked idle and quite bored with one arm across his chest, the corresponding hand supporting the elbow of the other arm that he held up to inspect his fingernails.

"Ah, welcome back Mr. Allen," the vampire said as he lowered both arms to his sides, his tone uncharacteristically polite, almost cheerful. "I'm very glad that the side effects Dr. McGee warned me about that paralyzing ring didn't ruin my careful plan," he added as he showed the thing ring in question.

Barry couldn't find his voice, because what was there to say? He was going to die the most wretched death of all: by the hands of the cursed soul he'd been sent to release, but which had cursed him instead.

He'd spent twenty five years bound to this world, hiding from Thawne until he could get stronger despite his impaired memory...All for nothing.

"The angels' habit of adopting multiple names like the mortals truly confuses me," Thawne confessed. "For the past twenty-five years, I've called you 'Flash' in my head. That's the reason why I renamed myself The Reverse Flash, if you must know. I used to go by Professor Zoom, was nicknamed so by my longest-lived donor. But since you were sent down here to free my soul from...How do you say it? 'From this wretched existence', yes. Yet, I'm the one who ended up binding your soul to this same wretched existence. I turned the table, made the story go backwards. Do you get the nickname now?"

This time Barry didn't speak because of the conscious choice of ignoring the leader of the undead in Central City.

"No?" Thawne asked with a curious tilt of his head before he shrugged and took a step back towards the door. "In any case, you going by so many different names prevented me from realizing that the angel that got away after I bit him was also the son of the exorcist I killed much too swiftly. Barry Allen, isn't it? I didn't make a connection between either identity and the name of the immortal who killed my boy Hunter. So imagine my surprise when I heard Snart the father refer to you as Savitar. He's dead, by the way, and no need to thank me. I did my part in promoting peaceful cohabitation between mortals and immortals. Ridding the city of him and the rest of his murderous subordinates was public service. Incubi blood doesn't quite suit my tastes, but newly turned vampires don't worry about consuming delicacies."

Barry didn't give a shit about Snart the father, but he was sorry for the deaths of his children.

"Ah, but I spared Leonard and Lisa," Thawne informed if as if he'd read his though. "After all, I promised to do so when I took over their rightful heritage, only and only if they could share an interesting piece of information about you," the vampire kept going, taking a few more steps back until he was able to reach back with his arm in order to grip the door handle.

The vampires had taken over sex-demon turf? Barry couldn't help but worry about the hunters he'd hoped would show up to rescue the bleeding humans. Leonard had said that they were Lewis' own donors, so they'd had guest rights on the territory, and they'd been indoors during curfew. According to the Cohabitation Law, they should've been protected.

"Of course, as an incubus, Leonard Snart assumed that your sex life would hold my interest," Thawne recounted conversationally. "It did, actually, because angels aren't like fairies, are they? Polygamy and polyamory are foreign concepts to you winged warriors. So whoever was your actual or potential sex partner on this earth had to be very special to you."

No.

NO.

"And what a coincidence," the vampire almost singsonged as he opened the door, and the delicious scent of Iris' blood invaded Barry's nostrils. "It's the same enhanced huntress I was planning to use to teach a lesson to the Coalition! And she happened to also be the free-lance journalist who writes so much about my 'wayward subordinates'. Yet another winged warrior hiding in plain sight. Well, it never actually is a coincidence with you angels, is it?" He asked rhetorically as he wordlessly invited someone in. 

If Barry wasn't so dehydrated, he might have very well teared up when he saw an unconscious Iris in the arms of one of Thawne's general, Edward Clariss. Blood was trickling down her limp right arm, and what had to be an enchanted large needle was stuck into her skin to keep the wound open. The vampire general looked as thirsty as the dark angel felt, and even Thawne momentarily closed his eyes and shook his head in reaction to the exquisite smell of the true angel.

"Heaven on earth, indeed," the coven leader commented before he licked his lips. "I must commend you for resisting the temptation of feasting on this most exquisite blood, Flash."

Barry tried to move fast, but he shouted in frustration when the chain at his ankle proved to be too difficult to get rid of in his weakened state. Clariss took a cautious step back all the same, then gently lowered Iris to the floor. 

Only then did the dark angel notice Iris West's true appearance. Her glamour had faded, and even without seeing her eyes Barry could tell that she was the most beautiful living being in this miserable world.

But his eyes quickly latched onto Clarris, who was now wearing gloves. The general pulled a long and narrow leather box from an inside pocket of his jacket, and all three males winced at the acrid smell of garlic when he removed a knife from the box and placed it in Iris' unmoving hand.

Barry started panicking internally. He'd never liked the smell of garlic since he'd started living with Nora and Henry, but he hadn't been so bothered by it before, not to the point of feeling like running away from it the way he felt now.

The long exposure to the UV light had exacerbated his curse. The presence of Thawne, the one who'd bitten him, was probably affecting him even more than his weakened state.

"It's not Gideon, but it will do," Thawne declared cheerfully as he pointed his chin at the knife, his pale lips stretching in a maniac grin when he saw Barry's eyes widen at the confirmation that the blood sucker had not only kept his weapon but had also learned her name.

"Twenty-five years ago you denied me your allegiance, Flash," the powerful vampire reminded him. "I wanted you to join me because I knew that my army would be decimated...But I never imagined that I would lose so many of my children," he added softly as he patted Clariss' shoulder. "You killed Eliza right in front of me, and just a few moons ago you killed my adoptive heir Hunter. This one," he then pointed at Iris, "Edward saw her run her sword through Thaddeus during the war. Thadeeus Thawne, my trueborn heir! He was only three hundred years old!"

"You should thank her then, because she saved his soul from turning as evil as yours," Barry managed to say clearly even with his croaked voice. "If you let her go, I promise to free his soul swiftly," he added as he pointed a steady finger at Edward Clariss. The general hissed, showing his fangs, but Thawne held him back with a raised hand.

"I actually wouldn't kill her," Thawne assured with a smirk. "If she freed your soul herself."

Barry didn't mind. He'd planned on asking Iris to send him back home in case defeating Thawne and his generals proved too difficult. There was no better hands to set his soul free than those of his soulmate.

"And then, I would turn her," the vampire leader announced as he waved his general to leave the room.

"If you touch Iris!" Barry warned him, knowing that his threat was empty.

But at a time like this, it was better to express anger than to express despair...

"I would more than touch her: I would bite her," Thawne promised. "Not once, not twice, but as often as I'd need to, until I would no more need to hypnotize her into following my will."

"Angels can't be hypnotized," Barry pointed out before realization hit him.

Turned angels could get hypnotized.

What about...what about half-turned angels like him?

"Of course, I'd need to practice hypnosis on you first," Thawne declared, and Barry knew that he had nowhere to go, but he took a few steps back anyways, then grunted in pain when the vampire painfully gripped his jaw.

He closed his eyes tightly shut and held his breath.

"Please open your eyes, Flash. Don't worry, I won't hurt you right now," the vampire spoke as he loosened his grip, and Barry didn't even get the time to think of resisting the persuasive request, his gaze immediately locked with the ones that had haunted his dreams for twenty five years.

In the nightmares, the entire eye lenses had been black and the sclera fully red, and the dark angel preferred that vision to this image of the human-looking blue eyes currently scrutinizing him with cold calculation.

"You don't want me to defile the one you love, do you? Please be sincere," Thawne asked him quietly, almost soothingly.

"No," Barry answered concisely.

"Then rest assured that I won't defile her," the powerful vampire announced before he let go of Barry's face.

The hope coursing in Barry's still warm blood allowed him to catch himself against the wall behind him despite his weak knees, and he stared at Thawne with wide eyes as the vampire walked towards the door. Thawne turned around and stared back when he was already past the threshold.

"Because you'll be the one defiling her yourself," the vampire announced, and he moved really fast, returning to his spot at the door but now holding the needle. "Drink, no, feed to your heart's content, Flash! Be thorough," he commanded this time, his eyes turning black and red, and Barry blinked as he temporarily went blind.

After giving him that final order, a true order via hypnosis instead of just persuasion like earlier, Thawne closed the door, and locked it.

For what felt like hours but couldn't have been more than a few seconds, Barry stood frozen.

He was dirty, and bruised, and weak. He was tired, and hot.

And he was so hungry, and so thirsty.

When time seemed to resume its normal pace, he let himself fall to the ground just as he felt his upper canine teeth grow past his lips, and he let out a scream of absolute despair before his body started crawling towards Iris' body without his consent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was an evil cliffhanger, I know, but what else did you expect with Thawne involved?
> 
> Don't worry, the next chapter will be out before the weekend!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris tries to get herself and Barry out of the cell.  
> Only it's not really Barry who's stuck with her in there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you wondered about the title of the fic and read the additional tags, you might have seen this coming, but either way: warning for blood, violence, the start of dubious consent and another mean cliffhanger 🙈 The chapter was getting too long so I split it in two.
> 
> My season review of the show in the endnotes contains spoilers, don't read if you're not caught up!

**Her**

A loud, drawn out sound of anguish woke her up, though she knew better than to let the vampires know that. She remained still on the dusty hard surface they'd placed her on.

Within a second, she knew that she was in a state to fight: minus a deep, stinging wound that was already healing on her right arm, she was just fine. She was getting hungry, though, so fighting her way out of wherever she was had to be the main objective.

Iris spent the next second being confused about the knife with the garlic-coated blade placed in her left hand. Why would vampires arm her with a weapon that could kill them, after confiscating all her other ones? She only had her very thin silver-blade dagger left, hidden in a pocket sewn along the seam of her jeans by her right calf.

As her third second of consciousness ticked in, Iris' brain went back to processing sounds because you know, that scream had sounded human. Someone needed help, very likely the meta-human who'd come up with that huge needle that Thawne's general had stabbed her with.

"...Iris, please wake up! Iris!" Pleaded the one voice the rogue huntress had not expected to hear right this moment.

Savitar? Ah, no, he said his real name was Barry.

"Barry?" She called back as she fluttered her eyes open, and damn, it was bright as day in here!

"Iris, get back! Move! Now!" The dark angel shouted before he himself jumped at her.

What the—

The noise of a metal chain being pulled taught to its maximum length resonated in the room just as the huntress instinctively slashed at the creature with fangs rushing at her. Then she retreated to a far corner of a room, right below one of the too many UV lamps—no wonder it was so hot in there!

However, for the first time in her career as a vampire slayer, Iris shouted in distress when the blood sucker hissed in pain.

"Oh my God, Barry, I'm so sorry!" She apologized as she threw the knife far away from her. "Barry, no!"

He didn't disappear in a heap of ashes, though. After grunting in pain and heaving in shallow breaths, he shuffled on his knees and sat in the shadows, right in the middle of the room.

Iris watched, speechless, as he removed his sweat-soaked long sleeve shirt and inspected the forearm she'd cut.

She remained speechless for a while, knife wound forgotten, because her eyes could still see him perfectly and holy shit he was so much hotter with just his undershirt on. The thin white piece of clothing was basically transparent the way it was wet and plastered to his skin, showcasing the toned but not overly cut muscles of his shoulders, arms, chest and abs—

"Jesus, woman, how about you focus!" Iris chided herself under her breath as she looked back on the wounded arm. The skin was raised like the scars on his face.

Right. Barry was only partially cursed, so garlic could harm him but wouldn't be lethal via a shallow cut.

The curse had gotten worse, though. She was so not feeling those fangs in combination with his burned face, which definitely looked paler. He looked like a true vampire now, only the creepy eyes were missing.

"No, no, no!" Barry groaned, probably more unhappy than her about this whole situation as he looked around, then stared at the spot where she'd woken up. "Iris, you need to get out of here!"

"We both need to get out of here," she corrected him firmly as she stood up. "Hang on."

She stuck to the walls since they were bathed in UV lights, except the area above the door (was this some torture room for vampires? There were ankle chains under each UV spotlight. She didn't need any confirmation that Thawne was a sick bastard).

Of course the door was fucking spelled closed. Sealed, even, if Iris wasn't mistaken. Nothing coming in and out.

Damn it. She wasn't sensing any ventilation going on. They would run out of oxygen in a few hours.

Oxygen. Carried by blood.

Angel's blood was magical, more so than blood from humans or earthbound immortals even though angels weren't magic practitioners like fairies. Anyone with basic spell knowledge could use angel blood to cancel a simple seal spell. Iris just had to think hard about the spells she'd learned in the elective exorcism course she'd taken when she was a trainee among hunters.

She turned around to share the good news with Barry, but froze when she saw him lick his lips and fangs while gazing down at the small pool of darkened blood on the floor, right where Iris had been lying unconscious.

"Barry, what the fuck! No!" She admonished him, but even as he looked up at her, his eyes unnaturally bright, he dipped a finger in her blood and brought it to his lips.

Iris didn't even have to imagine that the liquid was barbecue sauce, the way he slowly licked his finger was fucking hot, period. And the way his eyes half rolled in their orbits as his long eyelashes fluttered? Clearly her blood tasted just as good as her friend Linda's best homemade Korean BBQ sauce...

Her exorcist mother's soul have mercy on her, she needed some type of deliverance. This was sick. Thank goodness he'd stopped smelling like a walking wet dream or she might have already jumped him by now.

"No! I didn't..." Barry half-shouted, sounding apologetic. "Iris, I'm under hypnosis, you need to get out of here!"

"Hypnosis? I thought that angels couldn't—shit, you're partially cursed, of course it would work on you," she realized belatedly. "Barry, there's no going out of here, not immediately at least. I can break the sealing spell that shields the door, but I need some time to remember how to do a simple canceling spell."

"As long as you can get out before...no, please...stop...I don't..." he said in between sucking more of her blood from the pad of his thumb, until there was only a thin streak of blood left on the dusty floor.

"I'm sure that I'll be the first of our kind to go through devolution because of what I've just done," he commented dejectedly. "This is so wrong!"

"Hey, I'm taking it as a compliment," she joked. "I'm glad that you still have your healing powers, though, because that was very unhygienic...err, maybe stay back?" She added as she herself took the only step back that was feasible.

He'd stood up and had walked carefully closer to her. He even extended his arm to reach out to her when he couldn't get any further because of his chain. Iris stepped sideways to get back under a UV light even though he was more than an arm-length too far to touch her.

"I can't control my body, only my thoughts," he informed her before he looked back and jerked his chained foot around, trying to free himself. "This chain won't hold me much longer. We're lucky that I'm completely dehydrated and getting hungrier by the minute, otherwise I would've already recovered my strength."

"Oh, no," Iris whispered as she took a closer look at him.

He had faint and odd sun burns all over him, but they looked like they were healing...Oh, the scar on his arm was getting better too!

Right, it must be from tasting her angel blood, 'food from heaven' for cursed souls. The rogue huntress had to begrudgingly acknowledge the incredible willpower of Thawne and his general for not laying a finger on her despite making her bleed.

"Iris, what about the door?" Barry urged her verbally, while bodily he kept shuffling around to get closer to her.

"Right, so," she prompted herself as she went back to the door after taking out her hidden dagger. "An isotoxal octagram* sounds like overkill, but it's all I can remember on top of my head..."

"What are you doing!" Barry asked so loudly that she nicked her palm with the blade of her dagger, too superficially to draw blood.

"Drawing a magical diagram," she informed him.

"And you were going to draw it with your own blood?!" He questioned, his voice strained with frustration. "The blood that my cursed body just licked off the floor and is trying to suck directly from your jugular? Have you lost your damn mind, huntress?"

"Great, my husband from heaven sounds just like my father" she drawled with an eye roll. "Barry, you can't reach the blood I'm about to draw with, it will be a small star—"

"We're soulmates, not married," Barry corrected her, his facial expression not matching the surprised tone in his voice. "And please don't use the term 'heaven' like the confused mortals who believe that it's just one country, while it's actually the entire higher plane of existence directly connected to this one. Heaven comprises our world and the fairies' world among many others."

"Say that again?" Iris automatically requested, baffled.

"You'll remember when you go home," Barry promised with a sigh before he sat on the floor and tried to pry his ankle chain open.

Well, the hypnotized body was the one trying to free itself.

"Iris, you should just free my soul," the dark angel suggested as his body switched to tugging on the chain to dislodge the ring. "You won't get out of here with me as a distraction..."

"Barry, I'm not going to kill you," Iris refused categorically before glancing at the knife on the other side of the room. "Can I even kill you? You're not a full vampire, that garlic-coated blade alone can't—"

"Yes it can," he countered right away, "otherwise Thawne wouldn't have left you with it as your weapon. I'm already weak enough, only bloodlust is keeping my body going. If you seriously injure me all over, then stab me right in the heart..."

"I could never do that!" She let him know. "I couldn't willingly hurt you even if I didn't know that you're my soulmate! We saved fifty-two humans together just tonight! You're a good person, Barry, and I like you!"

"I like you too," he said back without looking at her, his body still busy with the chain.

This was such a bizarre experience. She hated Thawne more than before, which she wouldn't have thought possible.

"It's too bad that we both forgot," he added in a sad tone. "I think...I know that a lot of who I am comes from my relationship to you. I lost my way when I thought that I'd lost you forever."

"You're not a full vampire yet, Barry," she pointed out with forced optimism. "So let's not think about the extreme scenario of killing you, alright? I'm sure that a few of the new Coalition exorcists will be able to help you somehow. We just need to get out of here first."

"Iris, please, don't—"

Too late, Iris had already pressed the very sharp edge of her dagger into her palm, and she crouched down to start drawing the octagram on the bottom half of the door, but an inhuman snarl made her rush back under a UV light.

Uh-oh. That bloodlust had gotten much stronger.

"Barry?" She called out as she wiped her blood on the wall bathed in UV light, glad that her wound was closing right under her eyes.

No verbal response whatsoever, so she started side-stepping towards the garlic-coated blade—

"Shit," she cursed under her breath when the dark angel got to the blade before her, hissing as he grabbed the handle then quickly placing the knife right by the ring of his ankle chain. It was under a UV light, but it was also easily accessible for him. 

Was she overthinking things or had the hypnotized side of Barry gotten smarter? That would be odd because hypnotized people, as well as newly turned vampires, were dumb as hell.

"Well, once I open the door I'll just have to run and he'll follow," Iris decided as she reopened her wound and ran back to the door.

She used her wounded palm as a palette, and started drawing the eight-pointed star from the side so she had an eye on Barry. She placed the eight points first, drew the vertexes of one rhombus, then the other...

"Unseal, unlock, reopen, unbar," she chanted every time she completed a star leg, doing her best to ignore the primal noises the now wordless Barry was making. 

The cracking noises of the chain ring getting dislodged out of the wall was making her sweat more than the bright lights.

"Unbolt, un...un-latch!" She started stuttering, her panic making her blank out on words.

She was a journalist! Her speech wasn't the most eloquent, but her writing was impeccable! Of course she could come up with two more synonyms of 'unlock'! Come on!

"Unfasten!" She remembered just as she drew the second to last leg, almost drawing it too long.

Why the fuck couldn't she have remembered the drawing order for a classic pentagram instead?

"Un...un..." she hesitated as she slowly drew the last leg. "No, loosen!"

Fuck.

'Un-no-loosen'? How was the spell supposed to work with gibberish instructions like that?

It didn't, of course. And now Barry was loose!

"Barry, come on, you can fight this!" Iris encouraged the dark angel before ducking out of his grabby hands, then bending backwards to avoid a backhand fist in the face. She kicked him in the chest with both feet when she kipped back up.

(The heck? Why would he try to knock her out? Vampires preferred their donors to be conscious!)

"You're stronger than this curse! I believe in you!" She half-lied as she momentarily knocked him down with her well-practiced spinning wheel kick.

Maybe that would bring back his speech, but she wasn't going to count on it. She reopened her wound and started drawing another octagram, knowing damn well that she didn't have the time or focus for that.

Barry had been right: killing him was the only obvious way to help him and save herself. But even without her ethics involved, it's not like it would be easy: he was the guy who killed Zoom, and she was barely stronger than two newly turned werewolves. She'd need at least weeks of training to skillfully use her full angel strength.

"Barry, come on," Iris whispered as she heard him move, and turned around just as he gingerly sat up.

The way he tested his jaw and ran a hand through his hair gave her hope that his mind was back, but his chuckle took her by surprise, just as the words he spoke next:

"That's not my name," he asserted in a dark, breathy voice before he unhurriedly stood back up. "My name's Savitar."

Iris quickly went from confused to understanding when she saw that both of his eyes had changed colors: from green and discolored to black. His sclera was still normal, though.

Was Savitar his vampire persona, then? Minus the bloodlust, it took several months to a few years for newly-turned vampires to become different from their original selves, but Barry had been fighting his curse for twenty-five years, so it actually stood to reason that he'd have a case of split personality. The Barry Allen that Iris had met hours ago in that warehouse, the one she'd taken a quick liking to? He'd been different from what she'd expected from the mysterious and dark Savitar. 

The one who'd killed Zoom slowly and had let low-rank vampires survive to spread the story.

"Stop wasting that blood," Savitar ordered her as he removed his undershirt.

Iris wished she could fully enjoy the show, especially since his fangs had disappeared, but she was scared shitless while being horny but just on a primal level. She could smell Barry again, only she could tell that it was not Barry: he smelled much sharper than earlier. The scent wasn't seductive this time, it was overwhelming.

Like the way Savitar moved too fast for his supposedly weakened state and shoved her against the door, his hands pinning her wrists on either side of her head. She managed to keep holding her dagger, at least.

"That blood is mine," the new guy snarled as he glanced at the closing wound on her palm, then he stared at the side Iris' neck, where her frantic heartbeat  was probably visible.

A one-sided smirk made him look even more dangerous than he sounded when Iris swallowed in a vain attempt to moisten her dry throat.

"All of you is mine, Iris," Savitar claimed as he bent over to be at eye-level with her. 

The rogue huntress opened her mouth to set the record straight: she belonged to no one but herself. Not even her soulmate could claim to own her!

The vampire or dark angel or whatever was controlling Barry's body right now evidently didn't give a shit about Iris' words, because he kept her quiet with a kiss.

Oh, boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated! Update in a few days!
> 
> *it's a very cool-looking star, Google it! I didn't want to use the overdone pentagram in a circle.
> 
> Oh boy, the improvised episode finale was a let down for me. Yeah, the global crisis messed it all up, but as I've probably ranted about in another WA fic, the show runner was playing around with too many storylines from the start. I'm not even going to complain, I'm only going to list the things I liked this season: good non-speedster villains, more David Singh, the Wally appearance (oh, Keiynan, why? Please come back), and... 
> 
> SPOILERS  
> SPOILERS  
> SPOILERS
> 
> Cisco and Iris! I'm so disappointed that we got so little of either of them this season, but every second counted. Let my Sunshine Twins shine in s7!! Yes, Grant Gustin and Tom Cavanagh are great at doing the same thing over and over again (😬) but Candice Patton and Carlos Valdes are way too underrated, I don't get it. Echo was evil but very different from Reverb, I wish they'd dragged his story over a few episodes with more Cynthia's scenes. Mirror Iris aka Siri gave us the entire range of emotions, people, tell me that she didn't make you FEEL and I'll call you a liar. I'll watch Iris' haters stay bitter while her storyline gets better, FINALLY. 
> 
> SPOILERS  
> SPOILERS  
> SPOILERS
> 
> That last scene made it look like Iris is gaining the same power as Eva, or maybe it's different, but she's powering up! Our queen gave us looks throughout the season, too! Like, the woman is gorgeous, stop dressing her down! Bring in the thirsty fans, with the toxicity still pervading this fandom they'd be a breeze of fresh air, for real.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris gets to know Savitar intimately, and Barry remembers his first few hours in his current body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope that you'll enjoy this longer chapter, and that the whole Barry/Savitar thing makes sense. FYI, Barry/Savitar wouldn't understand why they switched, it was just instinctive, that's why Savitar's explanation to Iris doesn't make sense. But angel Barry (and angel Iris) would understand.
> 
> Lots of cameos in the flashback!
> 
> Warning for explicit sex, dubious consent (initially)...and pseudo-domestic violence? 🤔

**Her**

Iris quickly recovered from her shock at being kissed by Savitar and shoved her knee in his guts. When he reared back from the pain she cut his arm again, but since the blade wasn't special for his curse, she only drew blood this time.

"Ugh!" He grunted in pain, and before he could get his bearings she quickly pushed him face first into a part of the wall lit by a UV lamp.

"Oh, sorry, looks like I wasted your blood too," she noted with fake concern before she let her voice gain a more appropriate edge. "What you're gonna do, blood sucker?"

"I'm not turned!" He denied darkly before suddenly pushing off the wall—he used his knee against the hard surface for leverage—and diving backward, bringing both of them down.

Iris tried her best to stay on top as they wrestled on the floor, but she ended up on her back in the middle of the room. Savitar effectively pinned her down by sitting on her knees, holding both of her wrists above her head with one hand, and she went still when he brought her own blade against her pulse point with his other hand.

Fuck! 

"Such a human reaction," he scoffed as he tilted his head, his black eyes scrutinizing her. "So what if I slashed your throat and killed this one body? Your soul wouldn't start over: you'd remember everything and would come back eventually. And you'd still be mine."

"I'm pretty sure that us being soulmates doesn't make consent obsolete, you asshole," she hissed.

"Consent?" He repeated before letting out a humorless laugh. "Iris, we both know that you want me as much as I want you."

"I want Barry, not you!" She denied him.

"Are you sure?" He questioned her as he threw away the knife and shifted his hold on her wrists, keeping one on the floor while he brought the other up, placing her palm and fingers on the damaged side of his face. "You said that this was okay. You had a memory of the Flash, the important-looking angel in his fancy red and gold armor, yet you still felt attracted to this broken version of me."

Well, he acknowledged it himself: he was just another version of Barry.

"You don't sound broken to me," she argued evenly as she dared rub her fingers over his scar tissue, making him shudder.

"Yes, I am," he insisted in a whisper. "I'm broken because I've been alone for too long. I had human parents who loved me as their own, yet I was hurting from loneliness and from the shame of having to hide from Thawne. And when he took Nora's life and Zoom took Henry's, the pain only got worse. I wanted the pain to end. I couldn't do anything as Barry because I was paralyzed by the sorrow from my losses, from losing you. I was also paralyzed by the fear that the curse was irreversibly taking over me. Those feelings made me weak. But there were other feelings lurking around, which I was afraid to embrace: anger towards Thawne and his coven, and pride in myself for resisting the curse somehow."

Yeah, he definitely should be proud for that, that was no easy feat. Thawne was the most powerful vampire of all times. Iris and Barry were only alive right now after he'd captured them because he clearly wanted to teach Barry a lesson for defying him.

"But according to my parents and to the spiritual evolution theory that the Coalition brainwash its members with," Savitar kept going, "anger and pride, two of the deadly sins, could affect the integrity of my soul. I can't remember if that's actually true, but just to be safe..."

"You kept the two personas separate, somehow," Iris guessed. "Barry, still a caring angel, and Savitar, the wrathful and prideful angel."

He nodded silently, and he didn't stop her when she ran her hand down his face and neck. He simply closed his eyes and let out a quiet sigh when she ran her fingertips along his collarbones then firmly slid them down his bare chest.

"I anticipated that... the anger would go away once I got rid of Thawne," he explained when he opened his eyes again, but instead of staring at her he watched his free hand slip under her shirt.

"Hand where I can see it, Savitar," Iris ordered, but he ignored her.

She couldn't quite hide the shiver that coursed through her at the delicious friction of his warm hand on the sensitive skin of her belly.

"And it wouldn't be pride if I actually survived the curse. It would be confidence," Savitar shared his reasoning as if nothing was amiss. "My soul would be fine."

"Lust is a deadly sin, too," Iris reminded him as she tentatively pushed on the hand that had her wrist stuck to the floor.

"It is," he acknowledged with a subtle smile.

Neither of them believed that, and anyway they were soulmates.

He let her wrist go, and brought his other hand to join the other at her waistline.

Iris knew that he wanted to take her shirt off, and she thought of shoving him off of her since he clearly wasn't taking no for an answer...But she ended up extending her arms up and lifted off her shoulders to allow him to slip off the top over her head.

She chuckled in satisfaction when he groaned in frustration at the sight of her sports bra. Then she gasped when he thumbed at her nipples through the fabric.

"Later," he announced before getting off of her and settling with his knees on either side of her thighs.

As his hands brushed down her torso and ended at the fly of her pants, Iris internally chided herself for letting him have his way with her...

Wait.

Here she was assuming that they were going to have sex, but what if that was a lure?

"If you bite me," she warned Savitar as she quickly gripped his wrists while he was still sliding her jeans down her thighs.

She applied enough pressure to hurt him if either of them moved abruptly.

"Iris, you brought me out of my bloodlust yourself, of course I won't bite you," he assured her as he tried to slowly get his wrists out of her tight grip but she renewed her hold on him, though a less bruising one this time.

"What? How? By knocking you down?" She questioned in quick succession.

He huffed in amusement, then surprised her by bending over her and taking a slow, long and broad lick of the side of her neck.

She was so glad for that sealing spell on the door now, because the moan that escaped her lips was so fucking loud. And of course she was too turned on to stop him from resuming his exploration of her body.

Sneaky bastard.

"Maybe getting physically stunned helped," he whispered in her ear. "But I believe that the sound of your voice as you repeatedly called my real name eventually nullified Thawne's hypnosis."

"That...that—it doesn't make sense," Iris objected as she fought another moan when Savitar sucked on her pulse point while one of his hands pushed her right thigh open, not very wide because her legs were still stuck in the jeans below her knees.

"I'm not going to overthink it," he declared as he lifted back up and licked his lips when his gaze went to her soaked panties.

She bit her lips in turn, and closed her eyes in embarrassment when her hips instinctively lifted off the floor the moment he tugged her panties to the side. 

"Don't worry, I won't tease you," he cockily announced, and without further ado he thrust two fingers inside her.

"Oh my God," Iris moaned as he stroked her at a firm and steady pace right away, his movement making obscene squeaky sounds since she was so slippery already.

His other hand touched her all over, adding to the pleasure invading her body. It didn't stop her from thinking that this was such a disturbing experience: getting finger-fucked by the alter ego of the soulmate she didn't remember!

She was thrusting her hips up, matching the pace of his fingers to chase the orgasm, when a disturbing thought popped up. "Why would Thawne give me that tiny knife, to...oh, fuck! If he wanted me to kill you he should've given me something bigger...I'm almost there, fuck, don't stop!"

"He probably thinks that you've known about being an angel this whole time," Savitar guessed, seemingly ignoring her warning even though he started rubbing her clit more firmly, pushing her closer to the edge. "If you hadn't spent the last twenty five years as a human, you wouldn't have hesitated to free me from my curse, even if the process was drawn out and painful to me."

Iris was going to count this one blessing of her amnesia.

"I can't believe I survived twenty five years without this," he whispered in awe as he dragged the fingers he had inside her against her front vaginal wall the moment her pussy started spasming.

When Iris felt her toes curl, Savitar removed his fingers from her cunt and dipped his head between her legs to eat her out. 

She threw her head back and gasped sharply into the hot and stale air of the sealed room as she came on his tongue.

She kept her eyes closed afterwards, savoring the best afterglow she'd experienced in a while. She was pleasantly surprised by the way Savitar was bringing her down slowly, dropping soft kisses to her inner thighs and gently caressing her hips, then taking off her boots before removing her pants and underwear all the way.

Thank fuck, because she'd started toasting up. She was drenched in sweat, but she didn't give a fuck about it because she knew that she smelled good to him.

Oh, his own scent had changed back to...

"Barry?" She called out as she gently tugged on his hair, and sure enough the face that looked up had one green eye and the other discolored blue. His skin was also less pale. In fact, it was quite red.

"Iris," he called back as he sat up, his wide eyes and his deep blush in contradiction with the salacious way he sucked his fingers clean and wiped his mouth and chin with the back of his hand.

This personality switch was intriguing, but she had better things to worry about right now. 

She ostentatiously eyed the bulge in his pants then stared into his eyes as she started rubbing her foot up and down one of this thighs.

"Get these pants off and fuck me, Barry," she demanded in an effortlessly seductive voice.

"Are you sure?" He asked, probably not aware that his shy blinks were seducing her in return.

Along with his clear respect for explicit consent. Good boy.

"My glamour is gone, right?" She reminded him the reason why they hadn't already tried to break their respective amnesia spell.

"And you're even more beautiful than I anticipated from your scent and voice, Iris West," he smoothly complimented as he carefully placed her foot back down on the floor.

"You're very handsome yourself, Barry Allen," she returned the compliment with a giddy smile.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, or maybe in a corner of her heart, Iris imagined that she and Barry would've quickly fallen for each other if they'd grown up knowing each other. There just was something about them occupying the same space that felt right.

"Wait, wait, we should," he remembered something, and fished out a small vial from a boot.

The glass had to be spelled to be unbreakable. It contained two pills.

"To reverse the amnesia spell," he explained "I don't think that it's necessary since we're angels and soulmates, but I asked Caitlin to make it when I decided to get an escort girl. We should use it just in case your amnesia spell and all the other mind-altering ones need an extra magical boost to break down."

"Sounds good," Iris acknowledged before opening her mouth and getting her tongue out, too lazy to move.

Instead of immediately dropping the pill, Barry licked and sucked her tongue first. He took his sweet time about it, petting her hair with his free hand at the same time.

Holy! He was a different kind of dangerous, but he was just as dangerous as Savitar.

Once they both took the drug-carried spell, Barry got completely naked. He took hold of Iris' foot again, this time to lift her entire leg, guiding it up and bending it closer to her shoulder as he shuffled closer. She let her opposite thigh fall wide open to make even more room for him.

Iris couldn't lie: she'd ended up liking Savitar's cockiness, but she definitely preferred the reverence of Barry's gaze and touches.

His eyes were bright with trepidation as he eagerly drank her in, a few seconds before he tucked her leg around his lower back.

He then used both hands to help her out of her sports bra, and didn't waste time to fondle, kiss and lick her breasts. He explored every corner of her body his hands and lips could reach.

Iris was about to urge him to get inside her already when he adjusted her legs one last time then propped himself above her with one hand next to her head. He stared at her face while using his other hand to bring his cock to her entrance.

She hummed in approval as he teased his cockhead along her folds, and licked his way up her torso and onto the the side of her neck. Then, just like he did when he was in his Savitar persona, he sucked on her pulse point.

"Thawne hasn't won," he whispered the affirmation after lightly tracing his normal teeth over her sensitive skin. "I didn't turn."

"You didn't," Iris confirmed as she wrapped her arms behind his neck when he leaned away to look her in the eye. "Thawne cannot win, for the simple reason that he underestimates us. He doesn't know that we've found each other after twenty five years despite unlikely odds. His curse and the amnesia spells couldn't keep us apart."

The gravity of that fact sank in at the same time that Barry sank into her slowly, inch by inch, deliciously firing up her nerve endings.

On top of the physical pleasure that was making her moan and gasp as she and Barry found their rhythm, the rogue huntress experienced butterflies in her belly.

She was having sex, real penetrative sex, for the first time.☆ The events leading to the experience were unbelievably weird, but the end result was fantastic, and so easy. She and Barry fit so well, and that was without remembering being long-term lovers.

"Fuck!" Iris moaned in surprise when Barry gave her a sharp stroke, and he kissed her temple apologetically between his own quiet moans.

"It's okay, I can take it," she reassured him as he picked up the pace, going from his hand down to his forearm, slipping his other arm underneath her lower back to lift her closer to him.

"Come on, babe, give it to me," she encouraged him as she was able to better wrap her arms around him. "Make me remember how it feels to be your soulmate."

* * *

**Him**

_Generally speaking, rapture didn't last long at all when they were on earth, but the first one Barry exchanged with Iris in their new bodies had felt incredible. It had been even more incredible how easily he'd managed to make Iris orgasm twice more in less than thirty minutes._

_They might have to linger on earth for a little while after the mission was completed because he truly wanted to explore all the ways they could pleasure each other in their current matching bodies._

_"Wait, is that Gideon?" Iris asked when they were helping each other get back into their armors._

_She was holding the double blade horizontally, admiring the intricate runes carved on the metal._

_"Yeah, I thought that a change was in order since you've been able to easily identify me thanks to her," he joked._

_Gideon was a weapon crafted and gifted to Barry by a fairy long ago. Technically, she was an extension of his mind, but she had one of her own too. She herself decided what she wanted to look like every time he brought her down to war. For the past three missions he'd shared with Iris, she'd been a shield._

_He let his soulmate strap the large weapon to his back._

_"Bear, we're late for our meeting with the other generals," she declared with a sigh of helplessness when they stepped out of the deserted barn they'd occupied. Barry eyed the position of the sun in the sky and calculated that his beloved was right. It was his fault: he'd promised that they'd be quick, but Iris' new voice had sounded so melodious in the throes of passion, he'd needed to hear her for a little longer. Oh well._

_They flew back to the top of the hill where the interdimensional door was still let through more soldiers. Neither Barry and Iris knew who was who, but once they met with the other commanding officers they'd just split the army into battalions._

_Unlike the other soldiers, generals had distinctive armors, but since no one ever had the same appearance twice regardless of rank, the generals had to identify themselves at a meeting before deciding on a battle strategy then claiming their portion of the army._

_A very long time ago, before they'd become soulmates, Barry and Iris had belonged to the same battalion on a mission. They'd distinguished themselves in combat by simultaneously dealing a fatal blow to a tenacious evil Nāga after it had kill killed their general in battle. To this day, Barry argued that he'd beheaded the serpentine creature before Iris had stabbed it in the heart, and of course Iris claimed the opposite._

_"How are you always the last to arrive, Barry?" A general in black and emerald armor asked as the soulmates landed close by._

_Barry couldn't quite tell who that was. Oliver or John*? No one ever had the same appearance twice, but the reprimanding words sounded like either of those two. Either way, he was very good at identifying Barry and Iris._

_Most generals were generals because they had a soulmate who made them very strong and vice versa. Soulmates didn't always get assigned the same mission, though. Some spent several missions in a row away from one another, which was why they always tried to identify each other at every new mission. Barry and Iris were just lucky that they did it so quickly that they actually had time for more than quick kisses and words of encouragement._

_"Why aren't you saying anything about Iris being late, too?" Barry jokingly complained after exchanging a nod with an angel in red and blue armor._

_Her amused but sympathetic smile made Barry guess that she was Kara, or maybe Kate, but it could be anyone among the sixteen female generals Barry personally knew. Minus Iris, of course._

_"Because we all know that you're the one who dragged her away for a quickie," an angel in a white and bronze armor answered as she finished braiding her long blonde hair then looked up at Barry and Iris. "Oh, it wasn't just a quickie, was it? Look at the two of you glowing! I'm still waiting on your tips for mind-blowing human sex, Gold Standard," she added with a smirk._

_"Sara!" Admonished the angel standing right next to her in an all-black armor._

_Interestingly, she had features very similar to Sara's. Could it be..._

_"No way, Sara and Dinah**?" Iris asked, thinking the same as him. "You two finally got to look like sisters again! When was the last time it happened?"_

_"Can we focus here? This isn't a social gathering," the angel in black and green armor sharply reminded the group of ten generals._

_They had been: Oliver, Sara, Dinah, Ryan, Kate _, Kara_ , John, Jefferson*, Iris and Barry._

_"Let's go help the mortals and free those vampires' souls!" Barry commanded his selected battalion when they'd gathered around right outside of Central City._

_"Flash! Flash! Flash!" His soldiers chanted his nickname._

_The soldier who'd started the chant had identified himself to Barry, Singh. Barry suspected that they'd been on different missions before. It would come back to him in the middle of battle, for sure._

_Technically, Barry's troop was ready to go, but an odd feeling made him want to see Iris one last time._

_Where was she?_

_The helmet of his armor didn't significantly narrow his sight, but after too many seconds of fruitless search he removed it and started looking again._

_In a sea of black and gold armors, he eventually detected the purple and silver colors his beloved was sporting._

_She looked like she'd been looking for him too, because their eyes met quickly. Their smiles brightened their faces at the same time._

_"Iris!" He called out before he quickly weaved through the crowd, and when they reached each other they exchanged a brief but deep kiss in the middle of another general's battalion._

_Iris had been looking for him, her battalion was much further away on the hill, but like him she'd felt an odd need to see him again before the battle. After promising to see each other again in a few days, _they parted ways to deal with different factions of the vampires.__

_They'd known that Eobard Thawne, the one responsible for the human massacres of the last two days, was a strong vampire._

_They hadn't known just how strong he was._

_*******_

"Barry! Are you okay, Bear?" Iris asked as he groaned in pain, sitting naked in the middle of the room, the right side of his face burning him.

'Bear'.

His beloved hadn't called him that in twenty five years.

When Barry realized that the pain on his face was simply a sign of rapid healing, he waited for it to abate then sat straighter and deployed his wings.

They felt lighter in weight, and the feathers were back to being normal, though they weren't completely white.

"Oh," Iris reacted as she looked on, one hand gently cupping the now healed side of his face, the other right over his heart.

"You're so beautiful," he felt the need to remind her, and she smiled and pressed a soft kiss on his lips.

But when he retracted his wings and tried to get them back on the floor, Iris gently pushed him away at the same time that a light grey feather fluttered down between them.

"Don't try to seduce me into round three, Flash," she chided him, and he stole one last kiss before they set to wear their clothes.

Barry wasn't surprised that his protective spell was fully functional now, but he was in awe all the same: he wasn't a dark angel anymore. He would never forget the twenty-five years he'd spent earthbound and half-cursed, but now he was back to being his whole self, and Savitar was just a past version of himself, gone forever.

He'd been lucky to have that other side of him, which hadn't been under Thawne's hypnosis. When convincing Iris to kill him hadn't worked and the bloodlust had become too strong, he'd let Savitar take over. Savitar wasn't disgusted by bloodlust or violence, he embraced it. But he was still him, so the scent of Iris' sweaty body had shifted his attention from bloodlust to the conventional lust of the flesh.

But now Savitar was gone, along with his anger and his pride, and even the fear and sorrow were gone. Now his heart was so full of love and joy that it might not have any room left for another emotion.

Actually, there was enough room left for hope: in the promise of going home when the fight was over; in their ability to carry out the mission; in their cause to defend humans from evil against which they're defenseless.

Evil like Eobard Thawne. The Reverse Flash.

Barry knew that he and Iris had to retreat for now. They didn't have a chance to defeat Thawne on his own turf, with virtually no weapon to get through the many other vampires that must be around.

Weapons.

"Thawne has Gideon," he informed Iris after they put their clothes back on.

Iris' head whipped in his direction. She was crouching down, about to pick up the garlic-coated knife.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, and Barry's heart couldn't stop swelling from joy at the knowledge that he was reunited with his soulmate after so long.

"I was feeling guilty about not being able to complete the mission tonight," Iris admitted as she straightened back up. "But getting Gideon back would be a great victory."

Indeed. The moment they unsealed the door, Barry would be able to telepathically locate his weapon. He hadn't remembered that he could do that.

He volunteered to use his blood to draw the octagram for the unsealing spell, and shivered in pleasure when Iris licked the blood directly from his palm when he was done.

"Apparently, licking an insignificant amount of your soulmate's blood is punishable by devolution, so I better get punished too," she announced before bursting in laughter.

"Aww, come on!" He whined in mock outrage. "It was a valid concern!"

She was still laughing at him when she stabbed the vampire guard who checked on them because of the broken spell.

Barry couldn't help laughing with her eventually, right when they reached a wide and cold hallway, from where a dozen of wide-eyed vampires were staring at them. None of them was a general.

As he rolled the thin silver-bladed dagger between the fingers of his left hand, Barry absentmindedly realized that this was the first time that he and Iris would fight side by side ever since becoming generals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!
> 
> ☆ I never specified the type of sex Iris had 5 years ago, so let's go with the use of a toy for warmup because now that I think about it, that poor college date could've lost his family jewels if he'd been inside Iris when she had her orgasm🙈💀
> 
> *John Stewart or John Diggle? Jefferson Pierce or Jefferson Jackson? For the sake of the whole one name per angel business, pick one and assume that the other isn't an angel 🤣
> 
> **As in Dinah Drake or Dinah Drake-Lance or Dinah Laurel Lance...Black Canary for sure LOL.
> 
> Imagine being a mid-rank vampire and witnessing two angels laugh hysterically after one of them stabbed your brethren to death 😭💀🤣


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BAMF West-Allen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit more world building and some West-Allen action. 
> 
> Warning for violence.

**Him**

That silver blade was thin but sharp, so after some practice Barry was able to decapitate vampires in one strike instead of two or three. The first clumsy attempts had earned him splashes of dark, cold, and stagnant blood, which made Barry wrinkle his nose even after wiping his face. He'd need a hot bath and a lot of scrubbing to get rid of the stench.

Even though decapitation with any kind of weapon was an efficient way to slay vampires, it took longer for the severed heads and bodies to turn into ashes with regular weapons than with weapons tailored to slay them.

"Can't wait to get you back, Gideon," the angel whispered as he quickly moved on to the next vampire.

Unlike him who was brutalizing those mid-rank vampires before freeing their souls, Iris was gliding along the floors of the building, stabbing them in the heart every single time.

They were headed towards the direction of Barry's weapon. Both of them suspected that they were also heading into a trap, because they were detecting cameras everywhere, but no microphones. There had been cameras in that torture room too, but they'd finished a second round of sex before realizing it.

Barry wondered how Thawne had reacted watching them make love rather than kill each other. If he'd been watching them at all.

"Bear, watch out!" Iris' voice snapped him out his musings and he evaded a vampire rushing at him so fast that he crashed through the wall.

"Huh," the grey-winged angel reacted mildly as the vampire squirmed around trying to dislodged himself from the wall's plaster and broken wooden panels, then turned into smoke when he failed to free himself.

"Iris!" Barry called out as he pocketed the silver blade, and he tore off a big piece of wood just as the garlic-coated dagger flew above his head to hit the dark cloud advancing on him.

The vampire's tangible body and the special knife dropped from the ceiling. Barry intercepted the latter midair with his free hand and dropped down on one knee to plant its blade right into the vampire's heart when he hit the floor. As he stood back up, Barry flipped the knife in the air to change his grip on it, and threw it back towards Iris.

She was holding off two vampires, and leaned to the right at the last moment to evade the garlic-coated blade. It sunk into the skull of one vampire, and when the other tried to scurry off Iris picked up the knife and threw it into the back of his head.

"Guns are so much better," she commented before flipping her disheveled hair out of her face as she went to pick up the knife Thawne had provided her.

Her hair wasn't messy from the fight, it was messy from their earlier love-making. Iris was way too elegant in combat to ruin her own appearance.

"I hope that Gideon will agree," Barry replied as he took out the silver-bladed dagger and used it to sharpen the piece of wood he'd pilfered from the broken wall, then another. 

Two wooden stakes were more efficient vampire-slaying weapons than a puny silver knife. Now he could keep up with Iris.

The closer they got to Gideon's location, the more magic they were sensing.

"The building where I found Snart was...completely shrouded by a—by a magical fog," Barry shared with his soulmate as he freed cursed soul after cursed soul. "There was an intruder-detecting spell too. And the door...the door of that! Torture room had a sealing spell. We've both been earthbound for...twenty-five years. I've never heard of sex-demons...or vampires... picking up spell-weaving as a hobby. Have you?" He eventually asked before sliding across the floor on his knees and coming back up between two vampires to impale them on the sharp ends of his wooden sticks.

"Is this really what you want to talk about right now?" Iris asked after she finished freeing the last three souls around them. 

He blinked as the atmosphere between them shifted in the spans of seconds, and he dropped the stakes almost as soon as she pocketed the knife. He wiped his hands on his pants before opening his arms at the exact moment that she jumped on him.

He enjoyed a few seconds of the spontaneous hug, breathing in her wonderful scent.

"I can't believe that I survived without you for a quarter century!" She exclaimed when she dropped back down to the floor. "I'm so disappointed in myself for letting a human trick me into drinking an amnesia potion. You couldn't even count on my love to protect yourself from Thawne!"

"Hey, I got tricked into drinking an amnesia potion too," he reminded her after dropping a quick kiss on her forehead. "By the exorcist I asked to cast the protective spell. Her love as my adoptive mother, and her husband's love as my adoptive father ended up protecting me. Humans can be so generous with their benevolence. Their humanity is truly exceptional."

"Well, that's the reason why we keep coming here right?" She asked rhetorically as they resumed their way towards Gideon "We get to embody humanity more and more. I know that the others probably have completed a dozen more missions by now, but I believe that we've embodied more humanity in twenty five years than we have since the beginning of our respective cycles."

"Definitely," Barry agreed. "And a bit of destiny? Even without my memories of you, I felt attracted to you from the moment our eyes met, Iris. I think that we would've ended up together even just as Iris West and Barry Allen. Did you notice? We started getting along after an improvised collaboration in Gaya*, so did we here in Central City. That vampire we killed at the same time—"

"Reminded me of the nāga, yeah," Iris followed his train of thought. "You went for the head, I went for the heart, just like then. As Iris West I'm a tenacious journalist. What does Barry Allen do when he isn't saving humans?"

"Biomedical research" he informed her, realization dawning on him. "I'm a relentless researcher..."

"Both seekers of truth," they said at the same time, their eyes wide.

"Well, I'm sure that we're not the only ones who've made progress in the last twenty five years," Barry speculated as he picked back up his stakes. "This is good. I didn't remember anything about the universal virtues. Hey, good to know that so many humans figured out the concepts of virtues, though they don't get all of the universal ones in their teachings. Christianity has courage, hope and charity..."

"Bushido** has courage, benevolence, honor and honesty," Iris added. "I think all cultures get the virtue of courage right, or fortitude as I prefer calling it. Before learning that as hunter, I thought that humans hadn't retained anything of what we'd taught them. I happily stand corrected. Humans might be due for ascension soon."

Souls who embodied enough of the seven universal virtues moved up the evolution ladder by increments. Other virtues contributed to ascension too, but not as efficiently as hope, destiny, truth (honesty), courage (fortitude), honor, love, and humanity (benevolence or charity). In general, civilizations of blessed souls had high affinity for a few specific virtues, and individual members of a civilization had their own innate affinity for virtues as well. The better-rounded the individual members, the better rounded the whole group was, and the more easily they could reach higher planes of existence.

As a group, angels embodied honor, hope and love, just like the fairies and the other groups of the worlds located on their plane of existence. They believed that the powerful must always come to the powerless' help, even if complete success seemed unattainable. There were different ways to manifest virtues: so a warrior race like angels had practical customs different from pacifists like the fairies.

Like almost everyone else in the cosmos, angels and fairies had an interest in interacting with humans in particular: the human race as a group perfectly embodied humanity, hence their name. They also embodied love, but angels didn't need to learn it from them. 

The problem with humans being paragons of humanity was that cursed souls, who embodied more sins than virtues and were therefore at the bottom branches of the evolution tree, tried to appropriate humans' virtues by consuming them or turning them into their own kindred in order to progress.

No one among the angels believed that it worked, and all blessed souls agreed that such methods were an abomination. Slaying cursed souls was the best way to deal with them: it 'freed' them from the burden of sins such as envy, greed, lust and gluttony, which were what made them cursed and what led them to exploit human. The hope after slaying them was that they would do better in their next cycles of existence.

"Aren't you too optimistic for someone who was so terribly wronged by humans?" Barry asked. "What they did to you was terrible, Iris."

"I do resent them for changing me so much that I was actually able to physically harm humans," Iris admitted, but quickly added when Barry's eyes widened in horror: "temporarily, all of them recovered. Fellow hunters during training, a few thugs standing in my way when I investigated crimes, and an accident...As well as hurting humans through my inactions, every time I refused to help them because they'd broken the Cohabitation Law. But there's no use to holding onto grudges. I'll forgive Joe eventually, and the Coalition."

Barry shouldn't be surprised: Iris did embody forgiveness among many other non universal virtues, like faith and self-reliance. Barry on the other hand embodied respect and perseverance, which were coincidentally very common individual virtues among the fairies. Forja, Gideon's blacksmith, was one of the many fairies over the millennia who'd mistaken Barry for one of her own. Unlike other fairies who'd looked down on him once he corrected them that he was an angel, Forja had gifted him Gideon so he'd better protect humans, under the condition that he would never use her mindlessly. 

Barry had been impressed by Gideon's ability to change into any kind of battle gear he could think of, but he'd been completely taken by surprise the first time she'd talked to him in his head. She'd objected to his impulsive choice of a spear when she'd assessed through his own mind that a bow and arrows were more appropriate.

Fairies and their magic.

"Hey! Snart thought that I was a fairy," Barry remembered out loud when he and Iris approached the heavily spelled door beyond which he could sense Gideon. Even an average human would feel the waves of magic coming off of it.

"You really should've learned a few magic tricks over the past twenty five years," Iris joked. "Maybe we could've been invited to the fairies' world for a festival or something. It would be interesting to learn a thing or two from them too."

"Absolutely not," Barry deadpanned while he poked at the door with a stake.

Fairies were known to organize huge orgies during celebrations, and most angels looked down on them for that. Who would share their lovers with anyone, let alone strangers? It was utter madness.

Both angels took careful steps back when their ears picked up the sound of a vampire moving in smoke form.

He came out from under the door and materialized in the blink of an eye.

Edward Clariss.

"Hello Flash," he greeted Barry. "You can call me the Rival, because I'm the one that you'll have to beat to get your prize. But I'm the one who will win, and I'll get my prize," he finished before throwing a lecherous leer at Iris.

Barry wanted to let Iris slay him herself, but he'd been itching to slay that one since he'd seen him carry Iris in his arms. That vampire had touched his soulmate.

He'd regret it, just like Thawne would regret threatening to turn Iris.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!
> 
> *Gaya = real life ancient kingdom, pre-Korea.
> 
> **bushido= moral code of the samurai.
> 
> Apologies for a typo in chapter 5: I referred to Caitlin as Cisco's 'girlfriend' rather than 'friend', but hopefully you trusted that he wasn't two-timing her with Lisa Snart lol. Caitlin is currently with Ronnie, but I'm not even going to bother tagging them as a minor pairing because they only interact between the scenes, but Ronnie will be mentioned in future chapters.


End file.
